“S Street Rising takes us on a raucous journey inside the brutal world of crack addiction, as experienced by someone we might least expect — a Washington Post crime reporter. Here Ruben Castaneda serves it raw, reflecting frailties and contradictions that, to varying degrees, are inherent in us all.”
— Nathan McCall, author of Makes Me Wanna Holler
“As its narrative strands weave more tightly together, S Street Rising becomes a powerful, propulsive, narcotically fueled cri de coeur for an entire city.”
— Jerry Stahl, BookForum
“(Castaneda) paints an engrossing portrait of this woozy, lubricious demimonde and of the S Street ghetto where he scored . . . “
— Publisher’s Weekly
“Castaneda’s page-turner, told with easygoing charm and great skill, is an unstinting unveiling of who got away with what and when and how Castaneda followed the action and found himself. ”
— Eloise Kinney, BookList
“I have read over 200 memoirs, and yet there has never been one like this one. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
— Donna Davis, Goodreads
About the Book
During the height of the crack epidemic that decimated the streets of DC, Ruben Castaneda covered the crime beat for the Washington Post. The first in his family to graduate from college, he had landed a job at one of the country’s premier newspapers. But his apparent success masked a devastating secret: he was a crack addict. Even as he covered the drug-fueled violence that was destroying large swaths of the city, he was prowling S Street, a 24-7 open-air crack market, during his off hours, looking for his next fix.
Castaneda’s remarkable book, S Street Rising, is more than a memoir; it’s a portrait of a city in crisis. It’s the adrenalin-infused story of the street where Castaneda quickly became a regular, and where a fledgling church led by a charismatic and streetwise pastor was protected by the local drug kingpin, a dangerous man who followed an old-school code of honor. It’s the story of Castaneda’s friendship with an exceptional police homicide commander whose career was derailed when he ran afoul of Mayor Marion Barry and his political cronies. And it’s a study of the city itself as it tried to rise above the bloody crack epidemic and the corrosive politics of the Barry era. S Street Rising is “The Wire” meets the Oscar-winning movie Crash. And it’s all true.
About the Author
Ruben Castaneda was born and raised in Los Angeles, the son of a gas company worker and a homemaker. He is the oldest of five kids. When Ruben was a young boy, he and his family lived in an East Los Angeles neighborhood dominated by Latino gangs. Before Ruben began the second grade, the family moved to a suburb 10 miles east, where the Latino gangs were not as dominant.
