Bed-Stuy Is Burning

by Brian Platzer

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Do the Right Thing meets The Bonfire of the Vanities in this thrilling novel set over the course of one cataclysmic day when riots erupt in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood.

Aaron, a disgraced rabbi turned Wall Street banker, and Amelia, his journalist girlfriend, live with their newborn in Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of the most dynamic and historically volatile neighborhoods in New York City. The infusion of upwardly mobile professionals into Bed-Stuy’s historic brownstones belies the tension simmering on the streets below. But after a cop shoots a boy in a nearby park, conflict escalates to rioting—with Aaron and his family at its center.

Pulled into the riot’s vortex are Antoinette, devout nanny to Aaron and Amelia’s son; Jupiter, the single father who lives on their block with his son Derek; Daniel, Aaron’s unhinged basement-unit tenant; and Sara, a smart local girl, broiling with confusion and rage. As the day unfolds, these diverse characters are forced to reckon with who they are and what truly matters to them.

With mordant wit and compassion, Platzer conjures a sharp-eyed, fast-paced, and empathetically rendered narrative about a changing neighborhood and its residents, as they struggle to raise children, establish careers, and find love, fulfillment, and meaning. Bed-Stuy Is Burning offers a window into an array of complex lives and deftly wrestles with the most pressing issues of our time with unflinching focus, wisdom, and hope.

Release date: July 17, 2018

Publisher: Atria Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Bed-Stuy Is Burning

Chapter 1

Things were good. As good as they’d been in years. Maybe ever. IPhone in hand, Aaron lay in bed and focused the baby monitor app’s display in on Simon’s little chest rising and falling. Then out, in order to see Simon’s hands and feet. They were fiery white blobs against the flat-white crib mattress sheet. The infrared light shone from his son’s skin in the next room over. It shone from his baby’s face, fingers, and toes. Aaron focused the display in, and the light shone from Simon’s nose and cheeks.

“What?”

“What?” Aaron said.

“You were laughing,” Amelia said.

“Was I?”

He tried to direct his thoughts away from Simon, though not toward the next day’s numbers at work.

Amelia read People magazine in bed next to him. On the back of the folded-over page: “Hot MOMMAS! Celebrities are showing off their BABY BUMPS this summer!”

The featured Hot Momma wore pink bikini bottoms and a humongous floppy hat that hid her face. She cradled her pregnant belly with one arm and covered her bare breasts with her other, the hand of which held a giant untouched cupcake. “These Hot Mommas Are Eating for Two!” read the caption below. Except the Hot Momma hadn’t been eating at all. Aaron could see her collarbone and shoulders jutting out of her taut skin. She was suffering, the Hot Momma, and it needed to stop. Someone had to save her. The Hot Momma looked malnourished, starving, obscenely pregnant, and forced to pose with a monstrous strawberry cupcake.

Aaron shook off the thought. He was trying to shake off thoughts like these lately. Thoughts that brought attention to imaginary injustices. Maybe the Hot Momma was blessed with a high metabolism. Which was part of what made her so hot. She was a movie star, Aaron remembered. Maybe she’d devour that cupcake and ten dozen more.

Aaron tried to relax. He was lucky to live on this block—the nicest block in Bed-Stuy—and lucky to be sharing a life with Amelia and Simon, who breathed steadily on the video feed in Aaron’s hand. He was lucky to have a baby who looked just like him. Everybody said it. Well, we know whose baby this is! Both Aaron and Simon had hardly any neck and tiny ears. Aaron had never been proud of his tiny ears before. They both had little bug noses, too. Amelia said their noses were cute on both of them.

Aaron thought it might be slightly narcissistic to enjoy looking at his boy as much as he did. Before he went to sleep, he pretended to be working on his phone sometimes. But he was gazing at Simon—even though at night the infrared light meant all he could see were gray patches and blindingly white ones. He watched the bright packet that was his son’s chest rise and fall. He thought about how funny it was that this little baby was going to grow up with him as a father, with Amelia as a mother. With these neighbors as neighbors. That this life would be this baby’s life. That this baby’s father was an investment manager and this baby’s mother profiled celebrities for glossy magazines. Aaron reminded himself to breathe. To slow down his breath. Nobody felt relaxed on Sunday evenings.