Introduction

The year is 1974. Boston's Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood under siege, a community skating along the razor's edge of decline. The banks have REDLINED Jamaica Plain, causing the housing market to crash, wiping out local homeowner's lifetime investments and opening the neighborhood to blockbusters and slumlords. Now, someone has begun systematically torching those abandoned buildings and the charred body of Sandy Morgan, a dedicated young neighborhood organizer, has been found among the ashes. Why? Who stands to gain?

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Excerpt

Chapter 1 - The Vigil


February 25, 1974
Born in the northern Arctic, the icy wind swept due south past a freighter steaming east out of Argentia, Newfoundland, veered west, curled round the rockbound Maine coast, hummed a tune through the rigging of the Boston Lightship, crossed Boston harbor, swept up the corridor between Columbus Avenue and the Jamaicaway, ruffled the steel-gray surface of Jamaica Pond, funneled through the narrow canyon of double-deckers packed along Jamaica Plain’s Green Street, then cut like a sharpened blade through a down jacket and several layers of wool and sent a shiver tap-dancing up the spine of the young neighborhood organizer who stood lonely vigil on a cold winter’s night. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. What are Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and how do they affect the storyline and Flynt's strategy to stop the redlining.

2. Does Jed Flynt's character contain a paradox? If so, what is it?

3. Is Alex Jordan simply a liberal do-gooder or does her character go deeper.

4. What is redlining and how does it affect the fate of urban neighborhoods?

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