From MidWest Book Review:
Choices Made: The Street Years is the debut novel
of Christine McMahon and clearly establishes her as a gifted storyteller
able to take her reader into a gritty world of drug addiction, poverty,
and life on the street. It follows a young man who, after his mother's
death, searches for his biological father and falls prey to a brutal
sexual attack. Pimped and drugged, he eventually breaks out of one type
of slavery into the thuggish role of gang leader and protector, the
"Street Lord" of the 42nd neighborhood. As a new teen father,
he begins to regret his choices and wants off the streets for the sake
of his own son, and agrees to work as a "mole" for the Bureau
of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in exchange for immunity from
prosecution - yet when the undercover agent who gained his trust is in
mortal peril, he returns to the streets in hope of engineering a rescue,
triggering a chain of events that will cause him to meet his biological
father at long last. Grippingly told, Choices Made: The Street Years is
forcefully honest in its portrayal of the harsh forces that shape human
life for good or ill.
