Rooftop (review)

Not everyone in the Daytop rehabilitation program embraces the goal of rehab. Narrator Clayton, who's been caught smoking weed, is willing to give it a try, but his cousin Addison is still running his old games while appeasing his parole officer and avoiding a long stint in a juvenile home. When Addison finds himself short of cash to pay his supplier, he chases after Clorox, who has run off with Addison's money after a busted dice game. With Clay at his side, Addison heads to an apartment rooftop where he's certain Clorox will soon arrive; Addison holds his wallet like a gun in hope of frightening Clorox, but instead three policemen charge through the rooftop door and one, seeing Addison poised to "fire," shoots him dead. The shooting death of an unarmed black teen by a white policeman is now the cause célèbre of every politician, activist, and pundit, and a black mayoral hopeful convinces Clay he should testify that Addison was only reaching for an ID card. Clay goes along, but as the policeman's prosecution seems more and more likely, Clay is gnawed by guilt over his own silence. This tightly drawn story reads like an episode of Law and Order, but with street language left unexpurgated. As he did in Black and White (BCCB 6/05), Volponi again makes a direct confrontation of the racial divide that doggedly plagues American communities. Some teachers and book-club leaders may shy away from the profanity in favor of a less authentic novel, but that would be a shame—Volponi's eminently approachable tale compels discussion.