Excerpt:

Heavy barefooted steps crossed the carpet inside, and three locks clacked back on the door. Wyatt pulled open the panel and peered into the lightless hallway. "S'up, kids?"

Wyatt's belly hung down so far in front that only from a side or back view could his ragged boxers be seen. He gave Dante a scoping. "What happen, man? You get another attack or somethin'?"

"Naw." Dante jerked his chin upward. "C'mon, Wyatt. Pook an' me got somethin' to show you."

"Aw, I ain't up for them stairs tonight. Just c'mon in my crib."

Pook leaned over Dante's shoulder. "No. This be deep, Wyatt. Y'all c'mon up with us."

Wyatt studied his friends a moment more, then sighed. "Okay." He glanced back into the room. "Mom, I goin' up to Dante's."

"Your homework all done?"

"'Course." Wyatt stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him. "Okay. Whattup?"

"My crib, man," said Dante, turning to follow Pook.

Muttering, one hand on the back of his boxers to keep them from slipping off, Wyatt struggled up the staircase behind the other boys. Reaching the third floor, Pook unlocked the door to Dante's apartment, then stepped aside for Wyatt and Dante to enter. Dante snapped the wall switch and an ancient brass floor lamp with a tasseled gold shade came on on one corner, casting a warm yellow glow. Like the others below, the apartment had a pair of small bedrooms and a tiny kitchen, all reached by a hall off the living room. The ceilings were high in Victorian style, and ornate wooden lintels adorned every doorway like dark gingerbread. Lath peeked in places where plaster had fallen from ceilings or walls. A colorful Turkish carpet covered most of the living room floor. There was a tattered sofa draped in an olive-drab Army blanket, and an old brown leather chair, its arms carved like lion paws. Instead of a footstool there was a huge iron piston from a Superior diesel. Other bits of marine machinery were scattered about: intricate objects of copper and brass that were just cool to look at or touch even if you didn't have a clue what they were. Board-and-brick bookshelves lined one wall, holding rows of flea-market paperbacks and dog-eared technical manuals. Magazines covered the coffee table, their titles ranging from Workboat and Ships to Ebony Man and The Source. The sofa and chair faced a Philco TV that sat on a low chest of drawers. The apartment had a sort of faraway smell: a mixture of leather and rope and diesel and tar that somehow conjured a deja vu feeling of distant seaports. Fainter, were the man- and boy-scents of jeans and sweat and dredlocks.

The air was chilly, and Dante shivered in his sweat-soaked clothes. He went over to light a cast-iron gas fire that crouched in a corner on little clawed feet. Wyatt didn't seem to notice the cold, only padding to the couch and plopping down.

"So? Like I say, whattup?"

Pook said nothing, only locked the door. Dante glanced at him, and then at the package under his arm. Wyatt noticed the package now, and cocked an eyebrow. For a few seconds the only sound in the room was the gentle hiss of the gas flames. Finally, Dante slipped off his jacket and shirt and hung them on a hook above the fire, then came to the couch. He pulled the big pistol from his jeans and laid it on the coffee table before sitting down beside Wyatt.

The fat boy's eyes went wide. "The hell!" He picked up the gun and examined it carefully. "This a damn .357! Stainless-steel Smith & Wesson! How...?"

Dante's look cut him off. Pook came over and dropped the package on the tabletop. Wyatt still held the gun, but his eyes went to the package and then to each of the other boys.

"Okay. This deep for sure! What you two been doin' tonight?"

But, Dante was only staring at the package. Seen for the first time up close and in the light, it seemed the wrong shape for what he'd expected. It was wrapped in what looked like a black plastic garbage bag, and crossed like a Bible with silver duct tape, but it wasn't the right size for bundles of bills.

And... he recalled the loud thump of it hitting the table... it was way too heavy!

Dante drew back and stared up at Pook. "That ain't money!"

Wyatt's mouth dropped open. "Money?"

Pook's eyes were unreadable, but his face looked sad. He shook his head slowly. "No, brutha. It ain't."

Dante felt a crinkly, little-kid-gonna-cry feeling in his nose. His own eyes narrowed to accuse. "You knew that! The minute you picked it up! So, why you bring it here?"

Pook blew air and shrugged out of his coat. His solid shoulders and arms gleamed like burnished bronze beneath the tight tank-top. He crossed the carpet to hang his coat above the fire, then turned and shrugged. "I don't know, man. It like, once I pick it up, I couldn't put it down again."

Reviews:

School Library Journal:

When 14-year-old Dante and his friends find a suitcase full of cocaine, they face an excruciating decision: whether to flush the stuff, or to sell it. Selling the cocaine would bring the money they all desperately need, particularly Dante, who was born with a bad heart because his mother was a crack addict, but they know it would also add to the drug problems already affecting their Oakland, CA, neighborhood. Racist white cops and exploitative adults who get rich by playing off of these needy, often homeless kids all add to this affecting story that revolves around the ills of contemporary society. With its realistic, gritty dialogue; violent deaths; and semi-explicit sex scenes, this is definitely a book for mature teens; those readers will find authentic, unforgettable characters and descriptions that make the boys and their community come alive. Set among the rough streets of a modern Babylon, this is ultimately a story about family, friendship, love, and of kids living in poverty and victimized by drugs but still trying to make the right choices in their lives.

Beth Wright: Edythe Dyer Community Library, Hampden, ME

Publisher's Weekly:

The author of Way Past Cool offers another piercing view of inner-city life in this hard-hitting, suspenseful novel set in Oakland, Calif. Dante, born to a mother on crack, has a bad heart but his father can't afford the operation he needs; Pook wants to become a doctor; and Wyatt, whose mother owns a restaurant, weighs about 300 pounds. They've been friends since childhood, and all three want nothing more than to escape their crime-ridden neighborhood, where everyone around them seems like "little black ants... waitin' to get stepped on an' too stupid to see it." The boys cannot find a route to their dreams-- until they discover two packets of cocaine worth thousands of dollars. The moral dilemma that arises from their find is only one of the issues explored in this fast-paced, increasingly tense drama. Others include Pook's homosexuality, the homelessness of a younger boy the trio befriends and the ineffectiveness of a local rehab center run by a psycho-babbling counselor. Using dialogue that feels so genuine it nearly jumps off the page, Mowry personalizes the ghetto experience while clearly defining the conflicts, strengths and vulnerabilities of his characters, major and minor. His powerful images of violence and survival illuminate shadowy corners of contemporary urban America.

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER BOOKS - YOUNG ADULT NOVELS by RICHARD LABONTE

It's still too rare that there's a good gay-positive young adult novel: it's a treat that there have been six in just the first few months of the year, books written from varied perspectives and for a range of ages, but each suitable for either the straight kid willing to read of tolerance, or the lesbian or gay kid yearning for some validation. Fierce is a good word for Babylon Boyz by Jess Mowry (Simon & Schuster, $16, hardcover), a truly unique book in the genre of Young Adult novels--its center is a fourteen-year-old black gay basketball player, acclaimed for his prowess on the floor, looked up to by the homies, determined to make his way out of the ghetto and into a medical career. Pook, the hero, is a complex character whose homo-ness is as natural as can be.

© 1995-99 by Q Communications, Inc., all rights reserved QSF on the WWW by Mediapolis, inc.

Booklist: Youth:

Mowry, author of the fine adult novel Way Past Cool (1992), injects new life into one of YA fiction's standard formulas: the alternative family under attack from a hostile world. Here that world is Babylon, an inner-city neighborhood in Oakland, and the family consists of three boys as alienated from their peers as they are from mainstream society: Pook, whose nimble athleticism and well-cut body make his open avowal of homosexuality all the more inexplicable to most of his homophobic classmates; Dante, whose damaged heart is a death certificate waiting to happen unless prohibitively expensive surgery can be performed; and Wyatt, who is so fat he can hide a handgun under the folds of his belly. All three harbor dreams of escaping Babylon, and those dreams seem within reach when the boys recover a cocaine-filled suitcase discarded by a dealer on the run. As the story unfolds, we watch the boys, struggling over whether to sell the drugs, move from exhilaration at simply having a choice to acceptance of the difficulty of making it. What drives this novel isn't the melodramatic and sadly familiar elements of its plot but the striking individuality of its cast. Each of the boys rises above the stereotypical aspects of his character to become, not emblems of hard life in the ghetto, but vivid reminders that we are all more than the sum of our situations. Behind every incident, including some relatively explicit sex scenes, is the conviction that details matter. Mowry ends his novel with neither triumph nor tragedy, but with an affirming vision of three boys prepared to get on with the all-too-grown-up business of making choices.

Bill Ott

San Francisco Chronicle, June 29,1997: Gritty but uplifting stories about Black males:

Parents and teachers looking for books that focus on the challenges faced by young Black boys will find gritty but uplifting tails in No Turning Back and Babylon Boyz.

...In a groundbreaking effort, Oakland writer Jess Mowry gives us Pook -- a gay Black basketball-playing 14-year-old who is one of the major characters in Babylon Boyz. Moreover, Pook has homies who look up to him. They admire his hoop skills and the fact that he is determined to become a doctor. But for Pook and his crew, the path to glory is littered with obstacles ranging from broken homes to indifferent teachers and drug-dealing thugs. When circumstances present them with a cache of cocaine they can convert into big bucks, the boys face a moral dilemma. Do they destroy it and dash their dreams of escape, or sell it and add to their already nightmarish existence? Written in a fierce hip-hop cadence, Babylon Boyz is sure to fuel the eubonics debate. The seemingly ever-ready equation of drugs, violence and Black males is also likely to draw critics. But Mowry is to be applauded for crafting a complex, Black, urban gay teen whose sexuality is as natural as his breathing. In the mix that is young adult literature, Babylon Boyz definitely deserves a place.