Greetings from Mission Hill

by Brian Jelloe

Henry Gibbons is an almost alcoholic nihilistic wannabe writer straight out of college, attempting to find an upwards path in his native hometown of Boston, specifically the rough and tumble Black and Irish lower-middle-class neighborhood of Mission Hill. Henry's desire to escape the violent streets is real. He yearns to fly straight and find a way to transcend his dead-end surroundings. Fired from his first job as a union construction worker for beating up a co-worker, Henry gets pulled into the vortex of dealing drugs to support himself. His brother Liam, an inmate at Walpole State Prison, is doing 5 for dealing drugs. Liam’s finally released, wherein he and Henry conjure the grandiose dream of writing a script and moving out to Hollywood to make it big. Liam devises a plan to do a heist on the neighborhood drug lord, seeking vengeance and retribution in hopes of getting enough money to get to California and leave Mission Hill behind.

Oh yeah, it's a love story too.

Greetings from Mission Hill delves into class, race, family, brotherhood, and the politics of the Clinton 90s— when unions, Rap, and human social hierarchies ruled; in an era when the Red Sox and Patriots still hadn’t won much.

323 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 6, 2024

Reviews

[Annalise Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed it! Would read more from this author.