The crack industry was, no doubt, a tough trade. Most dealers had to harden their hearts to the harm they were doing to people they knew, to the communities in which they lived. Going to prison, for a while, maybe forever, was a part of the business model. Crack dealers got shot and they killed each other. People died at age eighteen or twenty-one or twenty-five.

But the rewards of success in the industry were just as real. Hand-to-hand sellers sported the latest footwear, wrapped themselves in gold, and partook of a brotherhood that gave them a sense of belonging and allegiance too rare in their atomized world. Many were young men who saw no mainstream way to reveal their talent or courage to the women in their neighborhoods or to the wider society in which they struggled to survive with dignity. On the streets, other options presented themselves in the hard world these young men made.