The Turnaround by George Pelecanos is a story designed to make the reader take a look into the past with a racial divide that was present within the communities of Washington D.C. It provides a setting that was present just after the Civil Rights Movement by discussing the genre of music and what athletes played basketball at the time. The Turnaround, is a fiction story which takes view points from young teenagers, not yet adults and what occurred one summer afternoon. It plays into the reader’s mind that the divide was very real, and that whites and blacks viewed one another completely different that one was group was of lower class and another group was more likely to succeed at life based off of their skin complexion and their location in Washington D.C. After the description by Pelecanos, the story then fast forwards to present day and focuses on how times have changed in their neighborhoods, while discussing the growth of each of the round characters. This growth took the round characters through a journey of pain, filled with regret to a road of redemption that lead to forgiveness and moving forward into a future together not as enemies or acquaintances, but as friends who end up viewing one another as family. Three of the characters that made a drastic change and found a hard time arriving to their …show more content…
He would drive around town with his friends, just enjoying life. Alex Pappas worked in his dad’s diner, as a child and when he became an adult, he took over his father’s business, and had plans to leave it to his son’s as well. Alex one day went joy riding with his friends, which would turn out to be a mistake. A decision by his friend that was driving, lead to one friend making a racial slur at a group of boys, which resulted in a murder, and Alex’s face being disfigured, while the third friend