Random Family

By Adrian Nicole LeBlanc,

Book cover of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx

Book description

Part 'EastEnders', part 'NYPD Blue', 'Random Family' is compelling and tense. It teems with passion, pain and pleasure, and shows us teen drug dealers with incredible organisational and financial skills, thirteen-year-olds having babies to keep their boyfriends interested, and incarcerated men who find life's first peace in solitary confinement. It's…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Random Family as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Random Family is a family saga; the story of two couples and their friends and families struggling to survive in the Bronx and upstate New York.

The author, Adrian Nicole LeBanc, spent years living alongside her subjects, which allowed her to paint an extraordinarily intimate portrait of the web of gangs, drugs, parenthood, poverty, and prison that dominated their lives.

I play a small role in the story, as I represented one of the people depicted in the book in a lawsuit brought against a prison guard.

Reading the book was, therefore, a personal revelation—illuminating the rich and complex context…

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