First published 2026
George Washington Jonson escaped Atlanta's housing projects through Army service, then returned home to join the police force in 1992. A decade later, he patrols his old neighborhood while living in an affluent suburb with his white wife and stepson. His partner is a legacy cop who calls himself a redneck. Jonson now trains rookie recruits on the same streets where he grew up poor. During a night patrol, a split second confrontation with a white teenager ends in violence. Jonson fires a single gunshot that triggers cascading lies as public attention intensifies. The whitewashed surface of his suburban life starts cracking under pressure. The story fractures into two versions of his experience as Jonson faces the history that made him and the moral compromises demanded by a corrupt system. He must navigate between his past in the projects and his present role as both cop and outsider in a broken institution.
Genres: drama, literary-fiction, american-fiction, crime, contemporary, psychological-thriller
Vibes: dark, introspective, morally-complex, tense, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, fractured-narrative, past-haunting-present, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Atlanta, Atlanta housing projects
Period: 1992, 2000s
672 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow
Content warnings: racism, violence