Dear Marcus
A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The idea to write to you was not an easy one.
The scar from where the bullet entered my back is still there.
Jerry McGill was thirteen years old, walking home through the projects of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, when he was shot in the back by a stranger. Jerry survived, wheelchair-bound for life; his assailant was never caught. Thirty years later, Jerry wants to say something to the man who shot him.
I have decided to give you a name.
I am going to call you Marcus.
With profound grace, brutal honesty, and devastating humor, Jerry McGill takes us on a dramatic and inspiring journey—from the streets of 1980s New York, where poverty and violence were part of growing up, to the challenges of living with a disability and learning to help and inspire others, to the long, difficult road to acceptance, forgiveness, and, ultimately, triumph.
I didn’t write this book for you, Marcus. I wrote this for those who endure.
Those who manage. Those who are determined to move on.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A moment of senseless violence transforms a young man in this inspiring memoir of disability. In 1982, McGill was 13 years old and living in a Manhattan housing project when he was randomly shot in the back by an assailant who was never found (he dubs the unknown gunman "Marcus"). The wound left him a near quadriplegic, and the once athletic boy faced an agonizing struggle to recover some bodily function, and adjust to losing most. McGill takes an unsparing though humorously insightful look at the frustrations and humiliations imposed by his handicap and at the permanent rifts his family suffered from the strain. In time, McGill learns to appreciate his care-givers, finishes college, embarks on a rewarding career, and experiences a tender sexual encounter with a former camp counselor. "Happiness is a thing I can control if I put my mind to it," he realizes. McGill moves from bitter contempt for his attacker to a deeper analysis of the ghetto culture of violence, fatherlessness, and misguided machismo that victimized him and eventually to understanding and forgiveness.
