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Pam Kelley
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Money Rock: A Family’s Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South Kindle Edition

by Pam Kelley (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 93 ratings
See all formats and editions
“An ambitious look at the cost of urban gentrification.”
—Atlanta-Journal Constitution

“Kelley could have written a fine book about Charlotte’s drug trade in the ’80s and ’90s, filled with shoot-outs and flashy jewelry. What she accomplishes with Money Rock, however, is far more laudable.”
—Charlotte Magazine

“Pam Kelley knows a good story when she sees one—and Money Rock is a hell of a story. . . like a New South version of The Wire.”
—Shelf Awareness

Meet Money Rock—young, charismatic, and Charlotte’s flashiest coke dealer—in a riveting social history with echoes of Ghettoside and Random Family

Meet Money Rock. He's young. He's charismatic. He's generous, often to a fault. He's one of Charlotte's most successful cocaine dealers, and that's what first prompted veteran reporter Pam Kelley to craft this riveting social history—by turns action-packed, uplifting, and tragic—of a striving African American family, swept up and transformed by the 1980s cocaine epidemic.

The saga begins in 1963 when a budding civil rights activist named Carrie gives birth to Belton Lamont Platt, eventually known as Money Rock, in a newly integrated North Carolina hospital. Pam Kelley takes readers through a shootout that shocks the city, a botched FBI sting, and a trial with a judge known as "Maximum Bob." When the story concludes more than a half century later, Belton has redeemed himself. But three of his sons have met violent deaths and his oldest, fresh from prison, struggles to make a new life in a world where the odds are stacked against him.

This gripping tale, populated with characters both big-hearted and flawed, shows how social forces and public policies—racism, segregation, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration—help shape individual destinies. Money Rock is a deeply American story, one that will leave readers reflecting on the near impossibility of making lasting change, in our lives and as a society, until we reckon with the sins of our past.

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  1. Print length
    300 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    The New Press
  5. Publication date
    September 25, 2018
  6. File size
    3293 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Money Rock:
“An ambitious look at the cost of urban gentrification.”
―Atlanta-Journal Constitution

“A gripping tale . . . . Kelley weaves a textured narrative.”
―National Book Review

“Thoroughly investigative and delightfully readable.”
―The Charlotte Observer

“This book would pair well with Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law. . . . Incisive. . . . Highly recommended.”
―Library Journal (starred review)

“Kelley could have written a fine book about Charlotte’s drug trade in the ’80s and ’90s, filled with shoot-outs and flashy jewelry. What she accomplishes with Money Rock, however, is far more laudable.”
―Charlotte Magazine

“With solid journalism, dogged research, perceptive observation, colorful interviews and memorable characters, Money Rock tells a memorable and timely story.”
―Shelf Awareness

“A diligent exposé . . . . A fascinating and hard-hitting story about drugs, crime, faith, and retribution.”
―Kirkus Reviews

“Extends the work of such classics as Code of the Street and The Corner with curiosity, economy, thoroughness, and a deep feel for the nuances of human life. . . . Kelley places the remarkable story of her remarkable protagonist, Belton 'Money Rock' Platt, in a larger narrative that is too often elided, illuminating, in the process, the difference between justice and mere judgment.”
―Garth Risk Hallberg, author of City on Fire

“Compelling. . . . Kelley's captivating account bears witness to people and places simultaneously striving and stuck; to the redemptive power of women; and to faith that a better way might be possible, for ourselves and our cities.”
―Susan Burton, author of Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women

“A powerful and unforgettable story of ambition, the failed War on Drugs, and those places where policies have failed to keep up with the human experience.”
―Wes Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

“Eye-opening and moving. . . . An honest and absorbing chronicle of the social and emotional devastation of 'law and order' and essential reading for anyone who cares about racial justice and the health of American cities.”
―Matthew Horace, author of The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America's Law Enforcement

“A bracing tale of love and hope, despair and redemption, civil rights and wrongs.”
―Byrant Simon, author of The Hamlet Fire

About the Author

A former reporter for the Charlotte Observer, Pam Kelley has won honors from the National Press Club and the Society for Features Journalism. She contributed to a subprime mortgage exposé that was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She lives in North Carolina.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07HNC71SS
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The New Press (September 25, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 25, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3293 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 300 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1620973278
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 93 ratings

About the author

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Pam Kelley

Pam Kelley

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Pam Kelley, a former reporter for the Charlotte Observer, has won numerous journalism awards, including honors from the National Press Club and the Society for Features Journalism. She contributed to a subprime mortgage exposé that was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

She first wrote about Money Rock as a courts reporter covering his trial in 1986. She lives in Cornelius, North Carolina. This is her first book.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

bmayer504
5.0 out of 5 stars A Story of Race, Injustice, and Redemption
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2018
Verified Purchase
Our reading group just finished reading and discussing Money Rock, and all of us found it helpful in understanding the connections between segregation, race, and generational poverty in urban America. Kelly is a gifted writer and her journalistic narrative (she is a former reporter for the Charlotte Observer) tells the story of Belton Platt, aka, Money Rock, one of the participants in the infamous mid-1980s gun battle at Charlotte's Piedmont Courts housing project. But she tells the story in the context of decades of organized racism and segregation propagated by the notorious Jim Crow system that predominated the American South well into the 1970s. Many argue that with the eradication first of African Slavery and then of Jim Crow, that all is well and that African Americans, in their words, should just "get over it." But Kelly puts the lie to that way of thinking, and documents how Charlotte's housing patterns, educational system, urban poverty, and political/economic system continues to be shaped by this long-standing discrimination based on race. Two-hundred-and-fifty years of slavery and Jim Crow have created a city where thousands are trapped in urban and generational poverty to the point where in a recent Harvard study Charlotte is the least upwardly mobile major city in America where if you are born into poverty, the chances of you ever getting out of it are extremely slim.

This writer moved to Charlotte from San Francisco in 1982 and while I was aware of a large racial divide in Charlotte as well as generational poverty, Pam Kelly's book gave me a much larger context through which to view it. There really are two Charlotte's--one the rapidly growing can-do city that attracts so many newcomers to its constantly changing skyline, and the other where thousands of its residents are trapped by long-standing educational, housing, and economic patterns that limit their choices and suck the very life from them and their communities. Want to know why American continues to struggle with race and poverty. Read this book.
4 people found this helpful
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wjb
4.0 out of 5 stars A great read
Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2018
Verified Purchase
This compelling chronicle draws you in immediately. This is not only a family's story about race, drugs and tragedy, but also a tale about an growing American city. The author's account weaved a tale about the social changes happening in the growing city but also the powerful ambition of one man who wanted to make his mark and strive for the things that mattered most to him, at all costs. Remarkable and unforgettable.
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Kelly Burgess
5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting personal story intertwined perfectly with the larger history of Charlotte.
Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2019
Verified Purchase
While the personal story of Money Rock, and even more to me, his mother, are compelling on their own, interspersing their stories with background information about segregation and housing policy in Charlotte made this book even more interesting. As someone who grew up in Charlotte during the city's boom in the 1990's, I learned way more from this book than I ever did in any history or social studies classes we had in school. I don't know if anyone will walk away from this book forgiving Lamont, or any of the city's drug or crime lords, but you will certainly understand how one could fall into those ways of life, and hopefully be compelled to advocate for change in our communities, so that the youth of today do not have to suffer the same fate. It is clear the author committed a lot of time to not only researching history and policies, but in interviewing and getting to know the subjects of the story.
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T.E.
5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping and insightfully book about race, crime and inequality in Charlotte, NC
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2018
Verified Purchase
Here is a book for our times. Pam Kelley's Money Rock: A Family's Story of Cocaine, Race and Ambition in the New South tells the story of Belton "Money Rock" Platt, a young drug dealer struggling to succeed in Charlotte, North Carolina, a city riven by segregation, redlining and a judicial system that disproportionately punishes non-white citizens. Kelley is a gifted writer and reporter, and her careful and empathetic writing about Platt turns this story of one man in one southern city into a microcosm of the racial and economic divides that challenge the country nationally. A book well worth your time.
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Boston Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read!
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2018
Verified Purchase
Veteran journalist Pam Kelley deftly delivers the story of a charismatic drug dealer who turns his life around, set against the backdrop of a booming New South city still coming to terms with its past. Belton Platt is an iconic character. His story of drugs, women and God jumps off the page. You don't have to be from Charlotte to find this book fascinating!
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