SPIDERTOWN

Living high as the apprentice to a drug kingpin in an impoverished, decaying South Bronx neighborhood, Miguel discovers the futility and emptiness of his existence when he falls in love with the beautiful Cristalena.

This promising first novel begins with the main character imagining his death in a hail of bullets and ends with the aftermath of a drive-by ambush. Set in a drug-infested ghetto of gun-toting teenagers, it tells the story of 16-year-old Miguel and his struggle to escape what he comes to realize is a dead-end path. A runner for Spider, a small-time dope dealer with big-time ambitions, Miguel drives a car on an illegal license and has $7000 stashed in a shoebox in the closet of the bug-infested tenement flat he shares with Firebug, an arsonist. When Miguel falls in love with Christalena, a girl of his own age who works a nine-to-five job for minimum wage, he considers giving up his profitable, if dangerous, occupation for a possible future with her. Amelia, Firebug's crack-addict girl friend, tries to convince Miguel that he's better than the life he leads, but he vacillates between a world in which teenagers live with their parents and one where a 16-year-old makes more money than his father. His indecision ultimately threatens his love for Cristalena and his life. Spiced with gritty, explicit dialogue and narrated in a tension-filled voice redolent of its South Bronx setting, the novel paints a believable and disturbing picture of urban youth for whom their parents' circumscribed existence is at one and the same time a prison and an escape. Major ad/promo; movie rights to Columbia; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This first novel tells the story of Miguel, a 16-year-old Puerto Rican American crack runner in the South Bronx. He falls in love with Cristalena, whose disapproval of what crack has done to her neighborhood forces him to look at his life from a different perspective. His struggle to hang onto Cristalena puts him in conflict with the world of the streets. Rodriguez ( The Boy Without a Flag, LJ 10/15/92) writes with the authority of an insider, clearly taking his work seriously, placing himself in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Richard Wright as an author who will look at and bring into the open a side of society that might otherwise remain hidden. This highly recommended work is mandatory for any library serving an urban or Hispanic community. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/93.
- David Dodd, Benicia P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.