IWE — Robert Lee

When a bigoted veteran Minneapolis police officer is caught on video in a racist rant while violently arresting a black suspect, it sets off a series of reactions in a city still simmering from racial tensions and questionable incidents involving police. Officer Scott Gibson is the lightning rod that draws a storm of media attention after he is recorded beating a black patron in King Rat’s, an exclusively black bar a short distance from the police precinct headquarters.But appearances may not be reality when a 6’6” massive black regular in King Rat’s, Deon Freeman, rescues Gibson from a vicious assault and the two form a mystifying and unique bond.Tensions should be further inflamed as soon as Scott encounters Janine White, an equally bigoted, outspoken black rights activist. However, the two polarized antagonists find they have more in common than they could have imagined, thanks to the guidance of Gibson’s new black friends, the Freemans.Can a quarter century of bad blood and black/white enmity be overcome when White spearheads a protest event, piloted by a long-time activist and former lover of Janine White’s, while Gibson faces a public fight for his reputation and career? There is much more to the overt countenance of White, Gibson, the Minneapolis Police Department and city of Minneapolis than is told by a sequence of racial conflicts.It will be up to Scott, Janine and the Freemans to forge a path of reconciliation and reconstruction and up to White and Gibson to come to grips with their personal differences and similarities.Part romance, part social commentary, this book is an exploration of the complexities and baseness of prejudice and prejudgment.