Excerpts-

• From the cover 1
  
  R&J Confectionary
  
  
  My story begins in 1978, with a young woman walking toward the corner of 125th Street and Edmonton Avenue. She’s recently arrived in Cleveland from St. Louis, looking for a fresh start at age twenty-four. A beauty with chocolate skin, a body shaped like a Coke bottle, a walk that’s impossible to ignore, and a taste for the kind of street life her new city is known for. Her name is Minerva Norine Martin.
  
  There’s a store on the corner, and Minerva opens the door. She loves to dress, so she’s probably wearing a skirt and some pumps, a couple rings on her fingers, with her trademark dyed streak of blond in the front of her straightened hair. The small, narrow store is clean and well stocked. It has coolers with eggs, milk, cheese, soda, and beer. Shelves with candy, bread, chips, cereal, and baking soda. Cigarettes behind the counter. Some video games, big consoles almost as tall as the coolers, like Defender or Pac-Man. A coin-operated pay phone is attached to the wall.
  
  A man wearing a dress shirt and pleated slacks stands behind the counter. He worked his tail off to get there: Served in the army in Korea, sweated in a factory that made stamping machines, drove a jitney car, installed roofs, took some college courses in business administration, ran numbers, and had all kinds of other side hustles. It took him fifteen years to save up to buy the store’s building for twenty-five thousand dollars cash, which back then was major paper. The man has a natural mind for business, for what people need and how to sell it to them, whether that’s milk on credit or Acapulco Gold weed. Now he’s thirty-three years old and a pillar of the neighborhood as the owner of R&J Confectionary. The J comes from the name of his wife, Justine. The R stands for Richard—Richard Paul.
  
  Richard takes stock of Minerva. He knows everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knows him, but this is something new.
  
  “How you doing, sweetheart,” Richard says. “How can I help you?”
  
  “I’m fine, thank you. Y’all got Newports?”
  
  “For sure, baby. I never seen you around here before, where you from?”
  
  “St. Louis. We just moved in down the street.”
  
  “Welcome to the neighborhood. I’m here 24/7/365 for the most part, baby. We got an after-hours thing upstairs starting at ten, bring whoever you want. Just ask for Rich, you won’t have no problems. So what’s your name?”
  
  Their eyes lock. My future mother answers:
  
  “Peaches.”
  
  That’s what everybody called her: Peaches. Wasn’t much soft or sweet about her, though. My mom was a firecracker, the center of attention in every room, always ready to set the party off. She grew up in St. Louis, the fifth of eleven children born to Mickey and Ruth Martin. In a family that big you had to go for yours, so my mom learned at an early age to be aggressive. If she wanted something and none of her brothers or sisters could legitimately claim it, she’d grab on to it like a pit bull. But she was a giver, too, and loved her family to death. She enjoyed taking care of her younger siblings, so she learned early how to cook amazing meals for them. When she got older, it was nothing for her to whip up a whole Sunday dinner on a random Tuesday. She worked jobs from fast-food restaurants to nursing homes and always had something moving on the side. She sold clothes or shoes that she obtained from different places—don’t leave your winter coat at her house, it might end up in a yard sale that...

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