Baby Chicago

What Use Is a Clean Soul, When the City Around You is Dirty as Sin?

Fatherless and as good as motherless, Messiah "Mash" Bankfield must shake his nagging religion from his consious if he wants to level up in a city centered around the 90's drug boom, twisted sexual exploitation, hardcore hip hop, and deep ghetto philosophy. Even if it requires hustling the same stuff that turned his child-abusing mother into a dope fiend or taking out the big homies who showed him love, some things just must be.

Shaped by the unsavory lifestyle of his sugar-daddy seeking sister, Tether, and haunted by the spirit of his deceased, righteous grandmother, Mash sinks deeper into the darkness. Sacrifices have to be made in order for him to take the title as the man of the house and make his bones as a young O.G. on both sides of the tracks. By age 15, he may have the heartlessness to sacrifice his scandalous cousin and the game to pimp his unknowing enemies, but will his savage ambition cost him his soul?

If you love moral complexity, slick-talking characters, thugs' sucker attacks, and graffiti-vivid introspection, then you'll find Keyawn Jackson's raw cautionary tale to be crazy illuminating, and just as chilling as it is hilarious. Baby Chicago is a riveting book series riding the wave of urban existence from the elders' spooky church sayings down to the dope boys' dice-game side betting.