Money Rock: A Family’s Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South

In 1986, journalist Kelley covered the trial of Belton “Money Rock” Lamont Platt for his role in a shoot-out in Charlotte, N.C., and here she expands that narrative to tell, unevenly, the story of “one of the city’s flashiest drug dealers and his striving African-American family, three generations swept up and transformed by cocaine.” His mother, Carrie, grew up in Charlotte chafing under Jim Crow and wanting to make a difference, Platt became a kind of avatar of the 1980s crack dealer, and four of his seven children died young or spent time in prison. Kelley attends to the minutiae of the Platts’ lives (Platt’s elementary school candy business, Carrie’s aversion to relaxed hair, the day-to-day routines of prison life, Platt’s liaisons and children). She also spins larger narratives about the cocaine in the U.S. and Charlotte’s 20th-century socioeconomic history (recounting, for example, that local white and black leaders shared lunches in the city’s upscale restaurants to usher in integration). Another major thread is of Platt’s Christian conversion in prison, becoming Apostle Platt of the Rock Ministries Church International. Though Kelley approaches individual lives with compassion and accessibly lays out larger historical trends, somehow they don’t quite connect to form a coherent whole. [em](Sept.) [/em]