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Jacob's Ghetto: You're not the product of your environment
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About Jacob's Ghetto: You're Not The Product Of Your
Product Description A young artistic African American boy sets his sights on winning a lucrative writing competition in hopes of escaping the ghetto he never wanted to call home. Jacob, a bright 10-year-old African American boy with exceptional writing ability, seems to have a promising academic future ahead of him. But living on the south-side of Chicago, life at home is nothing but. He is living in a drug-infested community with a residence overrun with roaches that should be condemned. With an addict for a mother, who’s in a self-induced comatose state most of the time, he’s not in a situation that he can easily test out of. Now of age where the gangs start to take notice, Jacob and his best friend Kenny have a brief run-in with Ja’heve. He is a brazen individual and second in command to a vicious gang known as “The Circle.” During the encounter, Ja’heve feels disrespected by Jacob’s refusal to join; he becomes furious and jealous of him and his intellect. He knows Jacob has the smarts to make it out of their hell hole of a neighborhood and vows not to let that happen. One morning while taking the train, Kenny finds a folded-up form and hands it over to Jacob to read, being somewhat illiterate. It turns out to be an entry form for a writing contest with a handsome cash prize and book deal. Suddenly a light of hope pierces through Jacob like never before. No longer feeling abject, and with encouragement from Kenny, he believes that he can win the contest and move he and his mother out of the ghetto and start a new life. Being continuously pursued and harassed by Ja’heve, Jacob’s daily survival becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse. He fears it’s just a matter of time before his picture ends up on the nightly news like so many other slain black kids before him. Jacob knows his time is short, but a chance is all he needs, and his will to survive is all he has. Review "Jacob's incredible story immediately draws you in, thanks to the author's talent for portraying authentic imagery and credible colloquial dialogue. Peagler effortlessly conveys the constant danger that follows Jacob in his daily life as he's left to fend for himself, both at home and on the streets. Jacob's Ghetto is a many-faceted, emotional story that will leave readers rooting for its lead character until its satisfying conclusion." -Self-Publishing Review (SPR), ★★★★ "...True to his themes of uplift and opportunity, Peagler has revitalized the archetypes of ghetto life, transforming them into meaningful symbols... Peagler has created a taut morality tale for the young, writing short, snappy scenes from ground level, and mixing fact and fiction into a wise contemporary fable for our times. This is a story constructed on"talent birthed from a place of pain and torment." We cheer Jacob as we do all young Black kids trapped but soldiering on in such places." - African American Literature Book Club ( AALBC.COM)
