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Two Young Lives And The Struggle For The Soul Of An American City
New Press
January 2009
On Sale: January 5, 2009
315 pages
ISBN: 1595581391
EAN: 9781595581396
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
When doing research inside Detroit’s downtown juvenile
detention facility, Luke Bergmann befriended Dude Freeman
and Rodney Phelps—both petty drug dealers facing profoundly
uncertain futures, living difficult lives in which chaos is
always around the corner. Bergmann would end up living three
years among the abandoned houses and desolate vacant lots of
one of Detroit’s most notorious neighborhoods. In telling their stories and those of their families,
Bergmann brilliantly explores the complex contradictions of
Detroit’s status as a “chocolate city,” proudly and uniquely
claimed by its predominantly black residents, where African
Americans firmly hold municipal power but also suffer the
legacy of lost manufacturing jobs and white flight. For
young men like Dude and Rodney who strive to find ways
toward “legal” jobs and straight lives, “getting ghost” is a
rich metaphor—for leaving a scene, for quitting the trade,
and for their own mortality. A tour de force of original analysis and powerful
storytelling reminiscent of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s
bestselling Random Family and Sudhir Venkatesh’s Off the
Books, Getting Ghost paints an unforgettable portrait of two
young men and of the troubled city they call home.
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