**THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK WITH AN IMPORTANT TITLE.**
John Vercher revolutionizes urban fiction with crime, contemporary issues, mystery, and thriller in his debut novel, Three-Fifths, and the outcome blew me away. During various points, I sat at the edge of my seat with bones shaking, eyes tearing, and my heart racing. Although it directly faces controversial topics such as racism and class differences head on, it surpasses those topics and brought me to tears simply as a parent, sister, friend, and human being. It is wrapped in a realism that occurs nearly every day.
The novel starts off with Bobby, an asthmatic young adult, walking back from work when he runs into his lifelong best friend, Aaron, who has just been released from prison. Riding home together, he quickly learns that Aaron views have changed and, terrified, continues driving him to the food mart where he witnesses Aaron’s criminal acts verifying his new allegiance to the Brotherhood. Bobby struggles with his own identity throughout the novel, hiding under his white features and the secret that he is really mixed. No one knows that his father, who was never around his entire life, is black. He feels like he cannot even rely on his own mother most of the time, and now feels his best friend has betrayed him. Now caught at a cross-roads drowning in accountability, Bobby’s racial divide antagonizes his relationships.
The reader also sees Bobby’s mother, Isabel, who is a single white mom struggling to make ends meet. She wants a better life for her son, but her job as a waitress and her own self-coping mechanism, being alcohol, sometimes create a barrier. “But halfway through the month, she and Bobby were still short on rent, and their need for shelter took priority over pride.” Her son, Bobby, is all she has and is willing to do whatever it takes to pave a way for him. But can she defeat her own monsters? She often wonders if she has made the right decisions and questions her judgment as a parent.
Robert, the doctor who receives the patient that Aaron assaulted the night he was with Bobby, also plays a major role in the story. With his co-workers and family members, we see a successful man who wrestles to accept his own identity. “…there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t look in the mirror that I don’t see a black man before I see a doctor. Because I have to.” Robert’s prose contends to express the racial barrier in society that sometimes goes unnoticed.
Both a humbling and intense read, I cannot recommend this book enough. Read the whole thing and don’t stop. Be prepared to be all in your emotions. Have tissues and be ready to have a book hangover. This story resonated with me on a personal level in more ways than one and is a story will stay with me for a long time. Please note, however, that there is an abundance of vulgar language and violence in this novel, so it might not be for everyone.
Thank you again and again to John Vercher for creating this important and inspirational story. An amazing debut novel that I highly recommend to others. Thank you to Netgalley and Agora books for allowing me the opportunity to read this piece of fiction. I will be following this author and eagerly waiting for his next book.