Jerry McGill

From the author of Dear Marcus comes a breathtaking novel about a fated love affair that crosses the divides of race and class. Rashid is a young Black man from Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, with a complicated life. Looking for an escape from a neighborhood few ever leave, he finds it in Rachel--married, twenty years his senior, and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. It begins with a flirtation and a tryst. It becomes an intense romance, exhilarating and enriching, that defies the expectations of Rashid's friends and family. What draws Rachel to Rashid is his curiosity, his need for intimacy, and his adoration--everything lacking in her crumbling marriage. But as the fault lines of their relationship become more prevalent, so do the inevitable choices one makes when falling in love.

A Novel

Bed Stuy

Color of Family

The idea to write to you was not an easy one. The scar from where the bullet entered my back is still there. Jerry McGill was thirteen years old, walking home through the projects of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, when he was shot in the back by a stranger. Jerry survived, wheelchair-bound for life; his assailant was never caught. Thirty years later, Jerry wants to say something to the man who shot him. I have decided to give you a name. I am going to call you Marcus. With profound grace, brutal honesty, and devastating humor, Jerry McGill takes us on a dramatic and inspiring journey—from the streets of 1980s New York, where poverty and violence were part of growing up, to the challenges of living with a disability and learning to help and inspire others, to the long, difficult road to acceptance, forgiveness, and, ultimately, triumph. I didn’t write this book for you, Marcus. I wrote this for those who endure. Those who manage. Those who are determined to move on.

A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me

Dear Marcus

A tragedy upends a family's delicate balance in an emotional novel about secrets, guilt, friendship, race, and reconciliation by Jerry McGill, author of Bed Stuy: A Love Story. Who wants to believe their family could ever be broken? Devon and James Payne are brothers and rivals since childhood. But they share an affinity for sports that brings glory to their Connecticut town and promise for the future. Then they're in a car accident. Devon is paralyzed for life, while James goes on to live the dream. For the Paynes, the tremulous repercussions of that evening never settled. Over the course of a decade, Devon decides to visit his seven siblings now scattered across the globe. Each has moved on, yet each struggles to cope with the traumatic event that irrevocably connects them. Devon confronts not only his own demons and family secrets but also the guilt and heartbreaking betrayals that followed in the wake of the tragedy. He also discovers the power of forgiveness--and that coming to terms with the past is the only way to live free in the present.

Jerry McGill

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