There will be no miracles here

By Casey Gerald

Subjects: SOCIAL SCIENCE, Historical, Harvard Business School, Noirs américains, Alumni and alumnae, HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY, State & Local, Ethnic Studies, Biographies, Yale University, African Americans, African American Studies, Dallas (tex.), social conditions, Biography, Universities and colleges, Personal Memoirs, African americans, biography, Gay men, biography, New York Times reviewed, Evangelists, Discrimination & Race Relations, General

Description: Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey--following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team--is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme.