THREE GIRLS FROM BRONZEVILLE

Journalist and novelist Turner tells a story of second chances, lost and found, in a memoir centered on the decline of Chicago’s once-storied Bronzeville section.

The author, a former Chicago Tribune reporter who grew up in Bronzeville in the 1970s, when Chicago seemed poised to offer its Black residents opportunities it had denied them since her great-grandparents had moved to the city from Mississippi during the Great Migration. But Turner and her younger sister, Kim, and best friend, Debra, stumbled frequently as they worked toward college or other goals amid drug- and gang-related crimes and a decaying infrastructure. In this heartfelt and well-informed but overlong memoir, the author entwines their stories with those of the three strong women who were “the original three girls from Bronzeville”: her mother, Aunt Doris, and her maternal grandmother, who said, “Low-income people don’t have to be low-ceilinged people.” Turner eventually found professional fulfillment in a high-flying journalism career, but her life remained profoundly marked by tragedies involving Kim, an alcoholic and teenage mother, and Debra, who smoked crack and went to prison for murder. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews, Turner reconstructs decades-old scenes and verbatim dialogue that build on stories she first told in the Tribune and on NPR. The high point of her narrative comes in an extended account of Debra’s successful reconciliation meeting in prison with relatives of the man she killed. Some of the potential impact of the book leaches away in repetitive or overwritten accounts of the author’s conversations with sources, which often include needless details or pleasantries such as, “Thank you for making time for me.” Nonetheless, this book offers hope to anyone who wonders whether, after a terrible crime, attempts at reconciliation are worth it. Turner doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties, but she leaves no doubt that—when the process works—the gains are vast.

A sensitive tale of tragedy and redemption against formidable odds.