Riding Dirty on I-95

February 20, 2006
In this gritty, fast-paced street tale with heart, a feisty young woman searches for passion, love and understanding while she hustles for survival. Mercy Jiles was a Daddy's girl until the age of seven, when gangsters murdered her father over a gambling debt. This loss, and her mother's neglect, defines Mercy's tough character, which is further shaped by subsequent years in an abusive foster care system. On her 18th birthday, she determines to make a life for herself in the inner city of Richmond, Va., where she meets a ghetto-fabulous drug-dealer-turned-murderer, C-Note. Social vulnerability, financial straits and materialistic ambitions lead her to transport drugs along the titular highway. Broke, unhappy but ever resourceful, Mercy leaves her life of crime for a career as a screenwriter, turning her shady experiences into successful movies. C-Note and Mercy cross paths again once Mercy has gone Hollywood and find a twisted redemption in one another, but their tangled pasts threaten their future. Turner (The Glamorous Life)
offers a vivid, nonjudgmental glimpse into a world of broken ambitions, backstabbers and self-loathers, where violence, crime and greed are flaunted as the keys to a better life.

March 1, 2006
Interstate 95 runs from Maine to Florida, and the stretch between Richmond and Miami is the main thoroughfare for drug traffickers. Growing up in Richmond, Virginia, Mercy Jiles is the last of eight children born to street hustler Nathaniel Jiles, who is murdered over a gambling debt on Mercy's seventh birthday. After 10 years of being in foster care, molested and mistreated, Mercy seeks emancipation. She works the only job she can get, as the concierge at a seedy hotel, and makes friends with some of the clientele. Once she begins dating a drug dealer, her quality of life improves. Without realizing what happened or how, Mercy becomes his mule, trafficking drugs on I-95. Another up-and-coming drug dealer, C-Note, notices Mercy. Each time they have an encounter, it is foiled because of their underground lifestyles. They finally become involved and discover that their families are linked. Mercy and C-Note have to decide if their desire to build a future together is stronger than their destructive pasts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)