Three-Fifths

July 15, 2019
Vercher’s uneven debut, a crime novel set in 1995 Pittsburgh, Pa., gets off to a fast, violent start. Bobby Saraceno, the 22-year-old son of a single white mother, at first doesn’t recognize his best friend, Aaron, an investment banker’s son who recently spent three years in prison for selling drugs. Aaron, who hooked up with the Aryan Brotherhood while behind bars, has shaved his head and beefed up. When the two friends go out to eat, Aaron’s prison tattoos catch the eye of a young black man, Marcus Anderson. After a hostile verbal exchange, the ex-con hits Marcus in the head with a brick. The panicky Bobby drives away from the scene with Aaron. Marcus is transported to the ER, where he’s treated by Robert Winston, an unhappily married black doctor, who later heads to a bar to drown his sorrows. There Winston encounters Bobby’s mom, Isabel, whom he doesn’t recognize, though they once had a fling. Isabel, who knows he’s Bobby’s father, doesn’t identify herself. More coincidences follow as this gritty tale of race in America swerves into soap opera involving Isabel’s efforts to bring Winston and Bobby together. The contrived plot might work better on the big screen than it does on the page. Agent: Michelle Richter, Fuse Literary.

Starred review from August 1, 2019

DEBUT Bobby Saraceno was 11 when he discovered his father was black. Reeling from the revelation--his racist white grandfather trained Bobby to hate people of color--he vowed to keep that part of his heritage a secret. His best friend Aaron imitated the African American kids in their Pittsburgh neighborhood, but when he went to prison for dealing drugs, Aaron learned to hate people of color after being assaulted. Now freed in 1995, Aaron is part of the Neo-Nazi movement. When a black kid taunts Bobby and Aaron at a local hangout, Aaron retaliates by beating the teen with a brick while Bobby watches. Guilt-stricken because he drove the getaway car, Bobby faces a dilemma: report his childhood friend or stay silent about the hate crime. When Bobby's alcoholic mother, Isabel, reconnects with the father he always thought was dead, she makes a plan to introduce him into Bobby's life. Becoming sober and giving Bobby a father to guide him could change the trajectory of their lives, but she might be too late. VERDICT Vercher deftly explores identity and the ethics of accountability in this debut. Fans of realistic social issue narratives will be immersed in the moral dilemmas of this timely novel.--K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019
A savage hate crime impels a young man toward a deeper reckoning with his biracial identity. Vercher's debut novel is a blunt-edged thriller in which several disquieting revelations are set in motion on a snowy night in Pittsburgh circa 1995 when Bobby Saraceno, a 22-year-old restaurant worker, is pleasantly surprised to reunite with Aaron, his best friend from school days, who has just been paroled after a three-year prison stretch. Bobby notices his one-time fellow comic-book nerd has come out of stir bearing a "Hulked-out" physique along with a deep facial scar. Soon Bobby notices something else Aaron's carrying: tattoos with lightning bolts and an Iron Eagle. They encounter a young black man at a fast-food diner who recognizes those tattoos as white supremacist insignia. He harangues them both toward the parking lot, where Aaron sets upon the black youth and repeatedly pounds his head with a brick. "Some animals need to be put down," Aaron says to a stunned Bobby as they drive away from his victim before police arrive. Bobby decides out of loyalty that he's going to protect himself and his friend from arrest even though Bobby's carrying a secret that neither Aaron nor anyone else in his life knows: That he is the son of a black man he's never met who had an affair with his white mother, a hot mess named Isabel who has trouble staying on the wagon. Not only has Bobby been "passing" for white, but even after finding out about his racial origins at age 11, he's also been carrying some of the same bigoted opinions toward minorities as his maternal grandfather. Matters are complicated when Isabel decides in the midst of this turmoil to introduce Bobby to his father, who it turns out isn't dead (as Bobby had believed) but alive and well and working as an emergency room doctor at a local hospital. A sad, swift tale bearing rueful observations about color and class as urgent now as 24 years ago.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 15, 2019
Vercher's first novel gets Agora Books, a new imprint dedicated to diverse crime fiction, off to a fast start. Bobby Saraceno is a 22-year-old mixed-race man living in the largely African American neighborhood of Homewood in 1990s Pittsburgh, during the time of the O. J. Simpson trial. Raised by his white, alcoholic mother, Isabel, and racist grandfather, Bobby passes as white, while his best friend and fellow comics nerd Aaron wishes he was Black, though he is ridiculed for adopting the style and mannerisms of the Black kids in the neighborhood. Things change dramatically when Bobby's father, a doctor whom Bobby believes to be dead, walks into the bar where Isabel works. Meanwhile, Aaron, having been incarcerated for drug dealing, returns from prison as a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and promptly assaults a young Black man in Bobby's presence. Bobby's life quickly spirals out of control, his sense of self reeling after he meets his father and struggles with whether he should betray his friend by revealing what he knows about the assault. Vercher, who is also biracial and grew up in Pittsburgh, handles the potentially melodramatic elements of his plot with considerable subtlety, building strong, multifaceted characters with bold strokes and using the tools of noir to present what is finally a full-blown tragedy. This powerful exploration of race and identity pairs well with Steph Cha's superb Your House Will Pay (2019).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)