Pam Kelley - 'Money Rock: A Family's Story of Cocaine, Race, and Ambition in the New South'

A veteran reporter with the Charlotte Observer, Kelley crafts this riveting social history about Money Rock, one of Charlotte's most successful cocaine dealers. A gripping nonfiction narrative—by turns action-packed, uplifting, and tragic—of a striving African American family swept up by the 1980s cocaine epidemic. This gripping tale, populated with characters both big-hearted and flawed, shows how social forces and public policies--racism, segregation, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration--help shape individual destinies. Money Rock is a deeply American story, one that will leave readers reflecting on the near impossibility of making lasting change, in our lives and as a society, until we reckon with the sins of our past.

A former reporter for the Charlotte Observer, Pam Kelley has won honors from the National Press Club and the Society for Features Journalism. She contributed to a subprime mortgage exposé that was a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She lives in Cornelius, North Carolina.

Kelley will be with Pastor Belton Platt, formerly known as Money Rock, in conversation with the N&O's Opinion/Solutions editor John Drescher.