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Overview

Ray Mitchell, a former TV writer who has left Hollywood under a cloud, returns to urban Dempsy, New Jersey, hoping to make a difference in the lives of his struggling neighbors. Instead, his very public and emotionally suspect generosity gets him beaten nearly to death. Ray refuses to name his assailant, which makes him intensely interesting to Detective Nerese Ammons, a friend from childhood, who now sets out to unlock the secret of his reticence. Set against the intensely realized backdrop of urban America, the cat and mouse game that unfolds is both morally complex and utterly ...
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More About This Book

Overview

Ray Mitchell, a former TV writer who has left Hollywood under a cloud, returns to urban Dempsy, New Jersey, hoping to make a difference in the lives of his struggling neighbors. Instead, his very public and emotionally suspect generosity gets him beaten nearly to death. Ray refuses to name his assailant, which makes him intensely interesting to Detective Nerese Ammons, a friend from childhood, who now sets out to unlock the secret of his reticence. Set against the intensely realized backdrop of urban America, the cat and mouse game that unfolds is both morally complex and utterly gripping.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Selected for Good Morning America's Read This! on June 5, 2003.

Editorial Reviews

The New Yorker
For more than two decades, in gaunt, endlessly alert prose, Price has embraced areas of the city, which have most novelists rolling up their car windows. Here Ray Mitchell, a New Jersey schoolteacher who has quit his job writing for a schmaltzy TV show and now tries to sell ghetto kids on the charms of creative writing, answers his door and gets his skull bashed in. Ray -- whether out of fear or shame -- refuses to say a word about what has happened to him, but, digging in his past, the investigating cop finds plenty to give her pause: a coke habit, a neglected daughter, and a recent affair with a drug dealer's wife. This is a crime in which the victim is the real mystery. Giving new meaning to the term "inner city," Price yields up not just the familiar, blanched moonscape of urban blight but the inner lives and jackhammering hearts of those who pace and patrol it.
Paul Evans
Tweetie, a ten-year-old black girl, is hit with a bat in the housing project where she lives; Ray Mitchell, a young white neighbor, stanches the blood and offers solace. Decades later, Tweetie has become Detective Nerese Adams and is tackling the last case of her tough career: investigating the beating of the same Ray Mitchell, who had returned from a TV-writing stint in Los Angeles to teach at an inner-city high school. Thus begins another of Price's first-rate urban morality plays—a compassionate, politically savvy whodunit that reads like Dostoevsky circa 2003. The author of numerous street-smart epics, including Freedomland, Clockers, Blood Brothers and The Wanderers, Price is renowned for in-your-face fiction: violent, fast paced yet philosophically complex. The screenwriter of such films as Sea of Love and The Color of Money, he's also demonstrated a flair for believable dialogue and visual detail. Whether celebrating black culture or the struggle of the white working class—his signature themes—he proves himself to be one of our best chroniclers of big-city experience.
More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews
Publishers Weekly
After a stint writing for a popular television show, Ray Mitchell has returned to his old New Jersey neighborhood to teach at his alma mater. Rethinking his life and trying to reconnect with his teenaged daughter, he soon suffers a terrible assault: he's nearly killed by a vicious blow to the head in his own apartment. He knows who did it, but is keeping mum. An old neighbor from the projects, Nerese Ammons, is the ready-to-retire detective assigned to Mitchell's case. She slowly tries to tease out of Mitchell any clues she can, learning about his past as well as about the relationships he has developed since his return. She's especially interested in Mitchell's battle with drug addiction and his current affair with the wife of a recently released convict. Boatman superbly recites this tale. He uses subtle changes in his tone and delivery to identify each character. Though his voice remains calm throughout the story, he maintains a palpable level of intensity that will keep listeners locked in to the details of Mitchell's tumultuous life. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Forecasts, Dec. 2, 2002). (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. It is a harsh lesson that Ray Mitchell learns, much to his regret. A successful white writer for television, he has come back to the predominately black New Jersey housing projects where he grew up. While trying to reconnect with his alienated teenage daughter, Ray volunteers to teach a writing class at his old high school. When he is found brutally beaten, his head crushed, Detective Nerese Ammons decides to find the culprit as a return favor to Ray; they are old acquaintances from the neighborhood, and Ray once helped her out when they were children. But Ray's refusal to identify his attacker doesn't make her job easy. Price's seventh novel returns to the gritty, decaying urban world of Clockers and Freedomland; once again, his characters are fully fleshed-out human beings, his dialog sharp and true. And Price's take on the nature of generosity (is the giving for the benefit of the receiver or the giver?) is a fascinating one. Like Nerese, however, readers will become impatient with Ray's "selfish selflessness"; the guy is basically a jerk. A dark, depressing novel for larger collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/02.]-Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The mastery of urban melodrama that Price demonstrated in literate blockbusters like Clockers (1992), and Freedomland (1998) keeps growing and deepening-as evidenced in his seventh novel. It's the story of a neighborhood and of conflicting ways of life, set in Price's fictional Dempsy, New Jersey, not far from New York City. And its central figures are two 40-something former neighborhood acquaintances: white TV scriptwriter Ray Mitchell, who has returned from La-La-Land newly wealthy, to teach a writing course at his old high school-and, just possibly, reconnect with his teenaged daughter Ruby; and black police detective Nerese Ammons, whose planned early retirement is delayed when she learns that Ray has been savagely beaten by an assailant whom he refuses to identify. A virtuoso alternation of advancing action with detailed flashbacks shows how Nerese's investigation into this mystery raises troublesome ghosts from the past, while also introducing a boldly drawn gallery of involved and potentially guilty characters. The prime suspects appear to be Danielle Martinez, the wife of a jailed drug dealer, with whom Ray has a brief, intense affair; the murderous Freddy Martinez himself; and Coley Rodgers (a.k.a. Salim El-Amin), a luckless denizen of Dempsy's mean streets who takes mercenary advantage of liberal, big-hearted Ray's impulses to be a good "Samaritan" to those less fortunate than he. That latter dynamic is analyzed with a ferocious admixture of bleak wit and sorrowful compassion, and the story positively vibrates with Price's trademark virtues of pinpoint observation (e.g., Nerese notices a TV set "so recently purchased that a few minute shreds of static-charged packing foam stillclung to the gunmetal-gray-frame") and punchy dialogue (a onetime repeat offender wryly boasts, "I don't just have a record, my man, I have a fucking album"). And the killer climax and ironic dénouement couldn't be improved upon. Magnificent stuff. If Elmore Leonard broke out of genre and were 30 years younger, he'd be Richard Price. First printing of 150,000; author tour

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781400040636
  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 1/7/2003
  • Sold by: Random House
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 400
  • Sales rank: 447,346
  • File size: 463 KB

Meet the Author

Richard Price
Richard Price
Richard Price is the author of six previous novels, including the national bestsellers Freedomland and Clockers, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1999 he received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His fiction, articles and essays have appeared in Best American Essays 2002, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Esquire, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. He has also written numerous screenplays, including Sea of Love, Ransom, and The Color of Money. He lives in New York City with his wife, the painter Judith Hudson, and his two daughters.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Biography

In a 1981 essay he wrote for The New York Times entitled "The Fonzie of Literature," Bronx-born Richard Price sums up the origin of his rep as a streetwise scribe:

"I doubt that if I had written about the suburbs I would have attracted nearly as much attention. I found most interviewers and reviewers more than willing to romanticize my background, to make it sound like I had come out of Hell's Kitchen or an Odyssey House. I spent three hours being interviewed by People magazine, insisting that I was not Piri Thomas or Claude Brown, I was a middle-class Jewish kid who went to three colleges. But when the issue hit the stands, the leadoff of the one-paragraph squib was, 'Richard Price comes from the slum-stricken streets and paved playgrounds of the Bronx.'"

So while he may not be the hardened thug that critics seem to want to believe he is, his string of bestselling novels and hit screenplays are filled with enough urban wit and grit to garner him commercial and critical—if not street—cred.

After graduating from Cornell in 1971, Price broke out of the Bronx with The Wanderers in 1974, when he was 24 and in the process of earning an M.F.A. from Columbia. A series of hard-boiled vignettes about a teenage gang coming up in the 1960s that Price scribbled in his spare time, the collection was whisked off to a literary agent by the head of Columbia's writing program, and Price's debut found a publisher. In 1979, Orion released a major motion picture based on the book. A sort of "anti-Grease," The Wanderers noticeably lacked the nostalgic bubblegum bounce of other coming-of-age novels and flicks of its day, and touched off Price's reputation for being unafraid to expose the dark side of Americana.

Two more acclaimed novels would follow—I>Bloodbrothers (1976) and Ladies' Man (1978)—but soon an out-of-control cocaine habit plunged Price into a creative and personal abyss. "I wasn't even that big of a doper," he recalled to Salon.com. "I was definitely bush league. But enough that it sort of preoccupied me for three years."

Hollywood proved to be the sunny savior Price needed to help him climb out of the funk. By the mid-'80s, he had become a top screenwriter with a roster of hits to his credit, including the The Color of Money (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), Sea of Love, Ransom, and Mad Dog and Glory. "[Screenwriting] kept me in the writing game, and it also showed me I was able to write about things that were not connected to my autobiography," he told Salon.

In 1994, Price returned to fiction with the novel Clockers—a gritty depiction of crack trafficking in the fictional city of Dempsy, New Jersey, a Dantean hell of crime and urban blight. (Adapted into a film by Spike Lee, Clockers would earn Price another Academy Award nomination for screenwriting.) Since then, he has revisited Dempsy in blockbusters like Freedomland and Samaritan, garnering praise for his unblinkered view of inner-city life and his pitch-perfect ear for street talk. A writer's writer, Price counts among his many admirers such distinguished novelists as Russell Banks, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Elmore Leonard, and Stephen King. But in a 2003 interview, he confessed that the greatest validation he ever received came from his teenage daughter who read Samaritan and told him he was "really good!" Says Price, "Of course I want The New York Times to sing my praises, but she's my kid."

Good To Know

Price lives in New York City with his wife, downtown artist Judy Hudson, and their two daughters.

The inspiration for his novel Freedomland came from the infamous case of Susan Smith—a woman who admitted to murdering her own children after initially reporting a fictional carjacking.

A former cocaine addict, Price occasionally volunteers his time to speak about the dangers of drugs to high school students.

    1. Hometown:
      New York, New York
    1. Date of Birth:
      October 12, 1949
    2. Place of Birth:
      Bronx, New York
    1. Education:
      B.A., Cornell University, 1971; M.F.A., Columbia University

Read an Excerpt

Prologue: OUT OF TIME

Ray - January 10

Ray Mitchell, white, forty-three, and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Ruby, sat perched on the top slat of a playground bench in the heart of the Hopewell Houses, a twenty-four-tower low-income housing project in the city of Dempsy, New Jersey.

It was just after sundown: a clear winter's night, the sky still holding on to that last tinge of electric blue. Directly above their heads, sneaker-fruit and snagged plastic bags dangled from bare tree limbs; above that, an encircling ring of fourteen-story buildings; hundreds of aluminum-framed eyes twitching TV-light silver, and above all, the stars, faintly panting, like dogs at rest.

They were alone, but Ray wasn't too concerned about it-he had grown up in these houses; eighteen years ending in college, and naive or not he just couldn't quite regard Hopewell as an alien nation. Besides, a foot and a half of snow had fallen in the last two days and that kind of drama tended to put a hush on things, herd most of the worrisome stuff indoors.

Not that it was even all that cold-they were reasonably comfortable sitting there under the yellow glow of sodium lights, looking out over the pristine crust under which, half-buried, were geodesic monkey bars, two concrete crawl-through barrels and three cement seals, only their snouts and eyes visible above the snow line, as if they were truly at sea.

Two Hispanic teenaged girls cocooned inside puffy coats and speaking through their scarves walked past the playground, talking to each other about various boys' hair. Ray attempted to catch his daughter's eye to see if she had overheard any of that but Ruby, embarrassed about being here, about not belonging here, studied her boots.

As the girls walked out of earshot, the snowy silence returned, a phenomenal silence for a place so huge, the only sounds the fitful rustling of the plastic bags skewered on the branches overhead, the sporadic buzzing of front-door security locks in the buildings behind them and the occasional crunching tread of a tenant making their way along the snowpacked footpaths.

"Dad?" Ruby said in a soft high voice. "When you were a child, did Grandma and Grandpa like living here?"

"When I was a child?" Ray touched by her formality. "I guess. I mean, here was here, you know what I'm saying? People lived where they lived. At least, back then they did."

At the low end of the projects, along Rocker Drive, an elevated PATH train shot past the Houses, briefly visible to them through a gap in the buildings.

"Tell me another one," Ruby said, her breath curling in the air.

"Another story?"

"Yeah."

"About Prince and Dub?"

"Tell me some more names."

"More?" He had already rattled off at least a dozen. "Jesus, okay, hang on...There was Butchie, Big Chief, Psycho, Hercules, Little Psycho-no relation to regular Psycho-Cookie, Tweetie..."

"Tell me a story about Tweetie."

"About Tweetie? OK. Oh. How about one with Tweetie and Dub?"

"Sure."

"OK. When I was twelve? Dub's thirteen, we're playing stickball on the sidewalk in front of the building, about eight guys. You know what stickball is?"

"Yes."

"How do you..."

"Just go."

"OK. We're playing on the sidewalk. Dub's standing there at the plate, got the bat..."

Ray slipped off the bench, struck a pose.

"Ball comes in..." He took a full swing. "And behind him is this girl Tweetie, she's just like, daydreaming or whatever, and the stick, on the backswing, like, clips her right over the eye like, zzzip...Slices off half of her eyebrow, the skin, the flesh-"

"Stop." Ruby hissed, jiggling her knees.

"Dub, he doesn't even know he did it. But she's standing there, and you know, like Dub she was black, Tweetie, very dark-skinned, and it's like all of a sudden over her eye there's this deep bright pink gash, totally dry, she says, 'Oh Dub,' in a shock voice, not mad, more like upset, or scared. And, I remember what was freaky to me, was that from the waist up she was calm, but below? Her legs were running in place. And in the next second, that dry pink gash? It just fills up with blood. And now Dub sees what he did, everybody sees it, and I remember, she says, 'Oh Dub,' again, in this fluty voice and then the blood just...spills, comes down over that side of her face like someone had turned on a faucet, and everybody just freaks, just...We're all twelve, thirteen years old, Tweetie is like, ten, but when we saw all that blood? People, the guys, everybody freaked and most of them, they ran away, they just ran, except me, I'm standing there, and Dub. Dub is still holding the stickbat and he has this angry look on his face like, it's not, it's more like he's stunned, he knows he's in trouble, he knows he should do something, apologize, explain why it's not his fault, but he can't, he can't even move, you know, the blood, and now she's crying, Tweetie, and me, I'm as freaked as anybody but I just wound up going robot on it. What I do is, I pull off my sweaty T-shirt, a white T-shirt, roll it up in a ball and I go over and put it on her eyebrow, like a compress. I'm holding it there with one hand, and I put my arm around her shoulder, she was a short little pudgy kid, a butterball, and I steer her to the curb and we sit on the curb rib to rib. I'm holding my T-shirt to that gash, I got my arm around her, and we just sit there. I have no idea what to do, what I'm doing, she's crying, and Dub, he's still standing there with the stickbat. He looks fierce, like he wants to punch somebody, but he is stone paralyzed...

"We're sitting there maybe three minutes, me and Tweetie, I think I got the blood stopped, Dub's playing statue, and all of a sudden I look at him and his eyes go, Pop! Buggin'. And he's, someone's coming from the other direction and just like that he drops the stickbat and hauls ass out of there. And he could run, Dub, but this wasn't running, this was freight-training, he was pumping so hard he could've gone through a wall.

"So I turn to see what made him go off? It's Eddie Paris, his dad. Eddie doesn't chase him or anything. He just crouches down in front of me and Tweetie on the curb, you know, like squatting on the balls of his feet? And he's calm, got a cigarette hanging from his lips, got his hair all processed, you know, marcelled back and I'm like, finally we got a grownup there, thank God, but instantly Tweetie starts saying, 'Mr. Paris, it's not Dub's fault, he didn't see me, it's my fault,' because she, I mean, everybody knew how Eddie lit into his kids when they screwed up and it was- I guess she was a nice enough person, a kid, I didn't really know her but...

"She says all this stuff to get Dub off the hook, but Eddie, it's like he's not even paying attention to her. He just puts his hand on my hand holding that T-shirt, I mean that thing was a big red sponge by this point, and he tells me to let go and he starts trying to tease the shirt off the gash to see the damage? But he can't. The cotton has meshed with the wound and was like stuck to it so he takes my hand, puts it back on the T-shirt, says, 'Just sit tight.' And that's what we did..."

"Where was Tweetie's dad?"

"I don't think she had one. Her family, her mother was some kind of wino or something, had this crackly voice, dragged herself around in a housedress."

"A what?"

"Bathrobe, always smoking, and she had two older brothers, Tweetie, one was like this ghetto-style drag queen, Antoine, he'd go around in flip-flops and a hair net. He'd like, camel-walk like..."

Ray got up again and took a few steps in a languid undulating mime, his eyes both sleepy and predatory. "You know, hung around the boys' room at school, tell you you were standing too close to the urinal, make you take a step back to see what..." Ray broke it off. "Anyways, Antoine, he stabbed someone, went to reform school, came out, stabbed someone else, went to jail. And she had this other brother Butchie, in and out of jail, real hard-core tough guy, stickups, drugs, guns, no sense of humor..."

"What do you mean no sense..."

"I'm, it's a joke."

Ruby stared at him, the story getting away from her.

"OK. Five minutes after he left us, Eddie Paris pulls up to the curb in his station wagon and he puts me and Tweetie in the backseat. We're like Siamese twins connected by a T-shirt.

"He drives us to the Dempsy Medical Center, I'm still with no shirt on and I'm wearing white dungarees."

"Dungarees?"

"Jeans. They just started selling white ones that summer. White, so you can imagine what they looked like with all that blood.

"We go into the emergency room. I'm topless, sitting there with her a half hour on the benches until she gets called. The doctor finally takes over on the T-shirt-holding job, they give me a hospital smock to wear and they let me watch as they kind of wash the T-shirt away from her eyebrow, little by little; then they sew her up, guy looked like he was lacing a boot.

"Eddie drives us back home, not saying a word, and little Tweetie, she just keeps up this line of 'Mr. Paris, Dub didn't see me, it's not his fault, it was an accident,' which is pretty amazing that a ten-year-old could have that awareness of other people, the trouble they were in, you know what I'm saying?"

"Go on..."

"Eddie just keeps driving, doesn't say a word, takes us back to Hopewell and that was it."

"Did she say thank you?"

"To who."

"To you."

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. She was a little kid."

"But she talked about Dub."

"Dub was in trouble, I wasn't. Ruby, she was in fifth grade. 'Thank you' is like Latin to a fifth-grader."

"I would have said thank you."

"And I would have said you're welcome, whatever."

"What happened to Dub?"

"Somebody said that he slept on the roof of our building that night, came home the next afternoon once his dad went off to work. But I don't really know."

"What happened to Tweetie?"

"I'm not sure. Something not good, I think. The last thing I remember with her was about three, four years later, when she was a teenager. She got caught spray-painting 'White Bitch' on the wall of Eleven Building, caught by the housing cops right in the act, and, I remember, that day, being on the basketball courts, all of a sudden everybody's running to the fence and there's Tweetie between these two cops and she's not exactly crying but there's, like, leakage, coming down her face and they just march her off to the management office on the other side of the projects, a whole bunch of kids kind of following them, making jokes and whatever. I mean, I hate to say this, Ruby, but kids can be real shits."

"Did you make any jokes?"

"I don't remember. I hope not."

"Did Dub make any jokes?"

"I don't think he was there."

"Did Dub ever apologize?"

"For the, to Tweetie? My guess is not."

"I would have apologized."

"I don't doubt it."

Another train shot past down on Rocker, distance giving it the scale of a Christmas toy.

"Go on," Ruby said.

"Go on where..."

"Tell me another one."

Part I: CONTRECOUP

Chapter 1
Ray - January 4

Entering Paulus Hook High School for only the second time since graduation twenty-five years earlier, Ray approached the security desk, a rickety card table set up beneath a blue-and-gold Christmas/Kwanza/Hanukkah banner, which still hung from the ceiling in the darkly varnished lobby four days into the New Year.

The uniformed guard standing behind the sign-in book was a grandmotherly black woman: short, bespectacled, wearing an odd homemade uniform of fuzzy knit watch cap, gray slacks and a commando sweater, a khaki ribbed pullover with a saddle-shaped leather patch straddling the left shoulder.

"You got a visitor's pass?" she asked Ray as he hunched over the sign-in sheet.

"Me? I'm here to guest-teach a class."

"They give you a teacher's ID?"

"A what?" Then, "No..."

Straightening up, he was struck with a humid waft of boiled hot dogs and some kind of furry bean-based soup that threw him right back into tenth grade. "Today's my first day."

. . .

With all regulation classrooms booked at this hour, Ray had been offered the faculty lounge to conduct his volunteer writers' workshop, but in his anxiety for this thing to come off he had shown up too early, walking in on four real teachers brown-bagging it around a long conference table that centered the room.

Despite his stranger status, not one of them even looked his way, and after standing inside the doorway for an awkward moment, he quietly maneuvered himself behind a large scuffed desk wedged into a corner and just sat there waiting for the period-ending bell.

The teachers, all men, seemed to be working their way through a hit list of rotten apples.

"Rosario?"

"Out."

"Jenkins?"

"Out."

"Fanshaw?"

"Out. I talked with his mother and I think he's out of the house, too."

"Maldonado?"

"Out. I just told him. I swear, that kid does 'Bewildered' better than anybody on two feet. 'Mr. Rosen, what I do? Suspended! Why?' Because you're on your own fuckin' planet, Edgardo..."

"How about Templeton..."

"I'm giving him one last chance."

"Aw, he got to you with that smile, huh?"

"Nah, nah nah, I just said, 'Hey Curtis, there's a new statute on the books-Consorting with Known Morons. I see you with Dukey, Ghost, or any of that crew? I don't care if it's a country mile from school property. You're vaporized.'"

"Vaporized?"

"Don't worry, he understood me loud and clear."

They were either ignoring him or simply letting him be, Ray scanning the walls, taking in the student artwork; mostly crude cut-felt mosaics featuring idyllic tableaus of urban positivism: a black family eating dinner together, multicolored neighbors planting a community garden, big brown kids reading to little brown kids.

When the bell finally rang, the teachers at the table groaned to their feet, as reluctant to go back to the classrooms as any of the students.

Three of them filed out of the lounge without ever acknowledging him, but the last one made a stop at the desk, leaning forward on his knuckles to offer a confidence.

"I would rate ninety-six percent of the kids in this school from OK to great; the other four percent are just stone fucking assholes taking up space and there's nothing we can do about it."

Alone now, Ray took in the disembodied sound track of the students out in the halls, a steady murmurous stream of agitation, punctuated by squawks, bird caws and bellows.

Five minutes went by, the muffled hullabaloo gradually fading away out there, yet he found himself still facing an empty room.

To conceal from himself how awkward and vaguely embarrassed he was beginning to feel, he began fiddling with his cell phone; checking for messages, calling the sports hotline, the 970 weather forecast; played with his datebook; then scribbled down a few introductory notes for his phantom students; coming off busy as hell, yet when the school's principal, Bill or Bob Egan, knocked on the open door of the empty lounge, Ray almost shot to his feet with relief.


From the Hardcover edition.

Table of Contents

First Chapter

Chapter 1

Ray - January 4

Entering Paulus Hook High School for only the second time since graduation twenty-five years earlier, Ray approached the security desk, a rickety card table set up beneath a blue-and-gold Christmas/Kwanza/Hanukkah banner, which still hung from the ceiling in the darkly varnished lobby four days into the New Year.

The uniformed guard standing behind the sign-in book was a grandmotherly black woman: short, bespectacled, wearing an odd homemade uniform of fuzzy knit watch cap, gray slacks and a commando sweater, a khaki ribbed pullover with a saddle-shaped leather patch straddling the left shoulder.

"You got a visitor's pass?" she asked Ray as he hunched over the sign-in sheet.

"Me? I'm here to guest-teach a class."

"They give you a teacher's ID?"

"A what?" Then, "No..."

Straightening up, he was struck with a humid waft of boiled hot dogs and some kind of furry bean-based soup that threw him right back into tenth grade. "Today's my first day."

. . .

With all regulation classrooms booked at this hour, Ray had been offered the faculty lounge to conduct his volunteer writers' workshop, but in his anxiety for this thing to come off he had shown up too early, walking in on four real teachers brown-bagging it around a long conference table that centered the room.

Despite his stranger status, not one of them even looked his way, and after standing inside the doorway for an awkward moment, he quietly maneuvered himself behind a large scuffed desk wedged into a corner and just sat there waiting for the period-ending bell.

The teachers, all men, seemed to be working their way through a hit list of rotten apples.

"Rosario?"

"Out."

"Jenkins?"

"Out."

"Fanshaw?"

"Out. I talked with his mother and I think he's out of the house, too."

"Maldonado?"

"Out. I just told him. I swear, that kid does 'Bewildered' better than anybody on two feet. 'Mr. Rosen, what I do? Suspended! Why?' Because you're on your own fuckin' planet, Edgardo..."

"How about Templeton..."

"I'm giving him one last chance."

"Aw, he got to you with that smile, huh?"

"Nah, nah nah, I just said, 'Hey Curtis, there's a new statute on the books-Consorting with Known Morons. I see you with Dukey, Ghost, or any of that crew? I don't care if it's a country mile from school property. You're vaporized.'"

"Vaporized?"

"Don't worry, he understood me loud and clear."

They were either ignoring him or simply letting him be, Ray scanning the walls, taking in the student artwork; mostly crude cut-felt mosaics featuring idyllic tableaus of urban positivism: a black family eating dinner together, multicolored neighbors planting a community garden, big brown kids reading to little brown kids.

When the bell finally rang, the teachers at the table groaned to their feet, as reluctant to go back to the classrooms as any of the students.

Three of them filed out of the lounge without ever acknowledging him, but the last one made a stop at the desk, leaning forward on his knuckles to offer a confidence.

"I would rate ninety-six percent of the kids in this school from OK to great; the other four percent are just stone fucking assholes taking up space and there's nothing we can do about it."

Alone now, Ray took in the disembodied sound track of the students out in the halls, a steady murmurous stream of agitation, punctuated by squawks, bird caws and bellows.

Five minutes went by, the muffled hullabaloo gradually fading away out there, yet he found himself still facing an empty room.

To conceal from himself how awkward and vaguely embarrassed he was beginning to feel, he began fiddling with his cell phone; checking for messages, calling the sports hotline, the 970 weather forecast; played with his datebook; then scribbled down a few introductory notes for his phantom students; coming off busy as hell, yet when the school's principal, Bill or Bob Egan, knocked on the open door of the empty lounge, Ray almost shot to his feet with relief.

Interviews & Essays

A Conversation with Richard Price, author of Samaritan
Q: Samaritan is your third novel (following Clockers and Freedomland) to bring to life the streets and housing projects of Dempsey, NJ. What made you want to return to this fictional landscape and how do you see this book in relation to those two?
A: I created the city of Dempsey, which has been the setting for all three books, because I didn’t want anyone to associate the location with a specific city and think, “Oh this is about Camden, New Jersey” or “This is about Gary, Indiana.” I want people to think of Dempsey as the nearest mid sized city. It’s about urban America. The fictional setting also allows me to invent whatever small realities, political quirks or other customized universalities I want without fear of misrepresentation. Socially tainted fiction like mine should be called Accurate Lying.
I see these books as connected in that each is an exploration of a facet of race relations in urban America. Clockers is about economic survival on the street and the relationship between cops and citizens in a world where people see the police as an occupying army. Freedomland is about racial paranoia, using the kidnapping hoax at the center of the story to write about white America’s readiness to buy the worst assumptions about the black people that live nearby but are not really neighbors (and also how the media is so willing to jump on that particular bandwagon). Samaritan is a much more intimate take. It’s about the Haves reaching out without really understanding what the Have Nots are all about, and the trickiness of trying to connect in a real andmeaningful way across the lines of race and class.

Q: Near the beginning of Samaritan, Ray has been beaten and left for dead and it is up to a cop (and the reader) to figure out whodunit. Is Samaritan a mystery? A novel of suspense? Or something else?
A: Like many writers before me, I find that the basic structure of a police investigation offers a natural framework for writing about almost any aspect of human nature with the built-in bonuses of criminally bad behavior and a strip-tease of gradually revealed identities. But this is not a “mystery,” or a detective novel. Of course I want people to fall into the book, to be eager to know what happens next, but Samaritan, like Clockers and Freedomland, is more of a “whydunit” than a whodunit. The social fabric, the background tapestry of everyday life is important, if not more so than the actual misdeed that propels the story.

Q: Nerese is convinced that Ray’s humanitarianism comes from a need to feel good about himself. As she says, “You need too much to be liked…That’s a bad weakness to have. It makes you reckless. And it makes you dangerous.” Is she right? Can the impulse to do good ever be free of a certain narcissism?
A: In terms of doing good deeds or extending yourself to others, I would imagine for most people there is something coming back to them in terms of “well, this is one way to get to heaven.” No interaction of this nature is ever completely selfless and certainly there are times when narcissism can poison altruism. Sometimes it’s very hard to find the line between delivering to people what you promised and leaving them feeling seduced and abandoned.

Q: In Ray, you have created a multi-layered character; the reader often feels both the urge to slap some sense into him and to applaud his noble efforts. How would you prefer for people to react to him by book’s end?
A: Basically, the guy’s an unregenerate human being, which is to say, like everyone else his ass is three and a half feet from his head. He’s a weak, needy but good-hearted person with too much power in too small a world. He has a hard time seeing the selfishness drizzled through his acts of selflessness but he means well, so. . .

Q: Are there any similarities between you and the character Ray?
A: Although this is a work of fiction it is obviously informed by a lot of my life experiences. In the course of doing the work for Freedomland and Clockers I found myself, in exchange for information or access into people lives, offering up anything--from money to jobs to simple human company to whatever would make it seem a fair exchange. And I also found myself doing a lot of pro-bono teaching.
I’ve given Ray many of the external elements of my life. We both grew up in public housing projects, had a history with drugs, and basically made our way out in the course of our lives through writing. We both grew up in a racially mixed environment-- in the 1950s and 1960s, at least in New York City, housing projects were as close to “melting pots” as America would ever see.
And to this day I find myself, for a million different reasons, going back to the projects where I was raised and will occasionally, like Ray, drag one of my daughters along with me.

Q: This novel deals with what one character calls “the enormity of small things;” how the smallest gesture of kindness can have immeasurable effects. Have you had such an experience in your own life?
A: Obviously, we’re all a product of our upbringing, schooled in how to be, who to be by the people that raised us. Yet, if the timing is right someone coming along and reaching out in a way that goes completely against the grain of that instruction, can be an earthshaking experience. As for myself, there were certain people, teachers for the most part, who have occasionally but lastingly turned my world upside down, although I imagine most of them weren’t aware of the impact they were having on me.

Q: Storytelling features prominently in Samaritan— in Ray’s relationships with Ruby and his students; in his role as father, teacher, and television writer. What is the power of
storytelling in daily life, especially for kids?
A: Sometimes it is easier for people to express their feelings towards others by sharing small stories that have always been close to their heart, these narratives a kind of long hand for “I love you.” Everyone, no matter what age, no matter how limited their experience or education, can tell a dozen great stories and usually they center around the mythology of their family. What makes them great is not that they are true or false or even well told, but that these anecdotes have been living inside them all their lives and when offered up they’re like giving a piece of your soul.
Q: The World Trade Center appears on the sidelines in this novel, its absence an integral part of the city as Ray gazes across the Hudson from his terrace. Did you feel it was important to somehow incorporate the events of 9/11 in the novel?
A:Writing a book about the New York area after 9/11 and ignoring what happened is like writing a book about Hawaii in late December, 1941 and ignoring Pearl Harbor. The question becomes: How do you integrate it without exploiting it? And how do you integrate it without losing sight of what you were writing about before September 11th?
Q: The family units that appear in your novel are non-traditional: single-parent, inter-racial, and joint-custody. Would you say that this contributes to the problems many of the characters experience?
A: I’m so used to non-traditional family units that I wasn’t even aware I was creating them. Sometimes I feel like a two parent house is as exotic as any other type of arrangement.
Q: Ray is a white guy who in Samaritan operates in a mostly black world. You are a white guy who covers racial territory and captures experiences many would shy away from. What has made you want to explore this terrain?
A: The whole notion of being white and creating black characters is a non-issue to me. A writer’s job is to imagine lives not his or her own so no race no gender no sexual preference, no religion should be out of bounds. The only mandate is that whoever you create on paper should be a multi-dimensional, full-blooded human being.
I choose to write novels with strong racial elements because race is the heart and soul of American history, race relations the great American obsession, and racism the American flu.

Q: What kind of preparation or research went into this novel?
A: Compared to the last few books there was no real research. Experientially I’d done everything that the character had done. I grew up in public housing, made my mark in Hollywood, taught in urban public schools. I”ve also spent alot of time with cops and around housing projects for the better part of the last fifteen years, because I believe in what Jimmy Breslin once said regarding Damon Runyon, “He did what all good reporters do. He hung out.”

Reading Group Guide

1. The novel begins as Ray tells his daughter Ruby a story from his boyhood in the Hopewell Houses. What is the significance of such stories for Ray? How good a storyteller is he? What is the effect of framing the plot within the story of Tweetie’s injury and his attempt to help her?

2. Chapter 5 gives an account of the information Bobby Sugar has gathered on Ray, including credit card charges and bank withdrawals, medical history, employment, address changes, etc. What does this chapter tell us about the way police detectives shape their view of a person and his or her possible motivations? How is that process similar to, or different from, the way a novelist creates a character?

3. Compare the book’s epigraph from Matthew 6:1–3 to the scene in which Ray, with Ruby present, gives Carla a check for the full amount of her son’s funeral [p. 109]. Ray’s ex-wife Claire comments, “Ray likes to save people, you know, sweep them off their feet with his generosity. It’s a cheap high if you’ve got the money, but basically it’s all about him” [p. 125]. How serious is this flaw in Ray’s character, and why does Price make Ray’s desire to help the novel’s central theme?

4. What is the effect of the novel’s structure—with chapters moving back and forth in time—on your reading experience? Why might Price have chosen to construct the plot in this way?

5. In one of Nerese’s many moments of insight, she muses about Ray:

“The constant white-black casting made her uncomfortable—no, made her angry; but that anger was tempered by the intuition that this compulsion in him wasn’t really about race; that the element of race, the chronic hard times and neediness of poor blacks and Latinos was primarily a convenience here, the schools and housing projects of Dempsy and other places like a stocked pond in which he could act out his selfish selflessness over and over…and that he was so driven by this need, so swept away by it, that he would heedlessly, helplessly risk his life to see it played out each and every time until he finally drew the ace of spades, or swords, and got the obituary that would vindicate him, bring tears to his eyes; key word, ‘beloved,’ if only he could figure out some way to come back from the dead long enough to read it.” [p. 215]

In Nerese’s view, Ray is driven primarily by narcissism, by an obsessive desire to be needed and to be thanked. Is her observation correct? Does this motive outweigh the good that Ray tries to do?

6. How incisive is Price as an analyst of race relations? In his desire to “give back,” is there any way for Ray to be comfortable about race, to enter his old community as an affluent white man offering help? Does Ray recognize that in giving Carla the money for the funeral he humiliates her, winning her resentment rather than her gratitude [pp. 109–110]?

7. Is Nerese the moral and emotional anchor of the novel? Why or why not? Given that she and Ray have come from the same place, how have they handled their lives differently? What are the differences in psychology of these two characters? What motivates them?

8. Discuss the relationship between Ruby and Nelson, two children of nearly the same age who are thrown together by Ray and Danielle’s sexual liaison. Why does Ruby refuse to apologize to Nelson when she hits him with the softball? What is the meaning of the story Ruby shares with Ray’s writing class [pp. 353–54]? Why does Price make children such a crucial part of the story?

9. Is Ray exploiting Danielle, or is she exploiting him in their sexual relationship? What motivates Danielle to involve herself and her son with Ray? She sees herself as an independent and self-motivated woman; Ray sees her as a woman who has chosen to stay in a marriage with a drug dealer [pp. 198–201]. Who is right?

10. Samaritan is a drama of redemption, or self-redemption. Why is shame referred to as one of Ray’s defining characteristics? Does he have good reason to feel ashamed of himself? Why does Ray need to redeem himself? How successful is he in his efforts to do so?

11. Who is the most likely suspect for the crime against Ray—Salim, Freddy Martinez, Danielle? To what degree is suspense—the “whodunit” quality—important in a novel like this?

12. How does the character of Salim come across? Why does Samaritan end with Salim, and a chapter called “Thank You” [pp. 370–77]?

13. Discuss Chapter 32, in which Nerese and Ray tell each other about their future plans. What do we learn about Nerese’s past and the way it shaped her life? What is she trying to tell Ray about adults’ responsibility to children? Does it seem that Nerese will be happier once she retires from the police department?

14. In a blurb for the hardcover Elmore Leonard stated, “I read Richard Price for the cool, spare sound of his writing, his words, the language he has in his bag that fits so exactly in his settings. The characters talk the talk.” Do you agree with his assessment? Find a few passages that exemplify Price’s strengths as a stylist and discuss their qualities with your group.

15. With Samaritan, Richard Price again reveals himself to be committed to writing novels that awaken his readers to raw and painful social problems. Charles Taylor commented:

“It seems to me that in reporting on some of society’s bedrock institutions (in this case, prisons and the police) and on communities that many of us are either cut off from or see solely in terms of social problems (thus robbing the inhabitants of their individuality) Price is doing work that we should expect from our major novelists. . . . Though Samaritan is his bleakest book, you put it down convinced he is trying to find, in the midst of racial and economic divisions, the things that we share. He’s the reporter-novelist as despairing humanist.” [Salon.com]

How powerful is Samaritan’s social vision? Does it have a message or a lesson for its readers? What questions and issues does the novel leave unresolved?

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
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Sort by: Showing all of 4 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 29, 2003

    4 1/2 stars

    Extremely insightful into what makes people tick. Great dialogue, realistic plot, smart writing. I was quite impressed...

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 30, 2003

    funny dialogue that makes you think

    Richard Price is, at heart, a comic writer, and he can't resist riffing at the most dire and edgy moments. Price also happens to be one of the best dialogue writers going. 'Samaritan' is Dostoevsky with a sense of humor. The best parts of 'Samaritan' are Ray Mitchell's interaction with his teenage daughter, Ruby, and his girlfriend's son, Nelson. The scenes are touching and hilarious. I remember reading one of Price's earlier books, 'Ladies' Man', in the College of Charleston Library, and laughing out loud to the point of disturbing people seated nearby. The beginning of that book starts out with a Canterbury-Tales parade of no-count singers and comedians trying to get into a NYC club expressly set up to mock bad talent. The mix of compassion for and impatience with these loser/dreamers is what makes Price such a perceptive writer. 'Samaritan' has that same blend of compassion for and impatience with the characters, except Price has a lot more respect for small kindnesses in the characters than he used to, a sign of his more mature vision. 'Samaritan' is a philosophical, street-lyrical book that'll make you laugh and think all the way through.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 18, 2003

    It's Good to be Back in Dempsy

    I jumped on the Richard Price bandwagon years ago with Sea of Love and Clockers. This author would have to work very hard to lose me as a fan. Samaritan is set in the same down-and-out housing project as Clockers. It's a neighborhood people move from, never to. Those who remain are suspect--they have to be damaged in some way, either financially or morally to not find a way out. The storyline surprises, and it doesn't. Readers who pride themselves on figuring out 'who done it' won't have to stretch too far with this story. The perpetrator's identity is not the payoff here. It's Price's ability to get inside people and make them so real, you can want to hug them and slap them at the same time. Yeah, just like the real people we all share our lives with. Samaritan is something of a morality play. Price never pretends that his hero is anything other than flawed and human. Very much like ourselves. We can read this story and learn from it.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 22, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

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