Author D.G. Allen’s The Black Ledger offers a glimpse into the true crime problems plaguing Chicago — and it’s not what you think.
The thrilling crime drama, loosely based on Allen’s experiences as a young white man selling life insurance in Chicago’s public housing, aka “The Projects,” transports you to the Windy City’s most notorious neighborhoods and forces you to face the people society has ignored.
A Compelling Narrative
With The Black Ledger, Allen creates a gripping crime drama, heartbreaking love tale, and timeless coming-of-age classic. Each chapter brings new surprises, engaging the reader with true-to-life trials and tribulations.
Allen’s clever use of literary devices draws the reader in and keeps them guessing. The story opens with a chilling murder, then transports audiences back in time to follow protagonist Ron Pickles through events leading up to the killing.
Pickles just graduated high school and desperately needs a job to support his wife and newborn child. He has no experience, so he takes the first job he can get: selling insurance at a shady conglomerate. The company wastes no time sending him to Cabrini Green, one of Chicago’s most notorious — and poorest — housing projects, demanding he make sales.
While juggling family life and adulthood, Pickles’ career thrusts him into a world where crime lurks on every corner. But he soon realizes his preconceived notions about “the ghetto” were wrong.
Forcing US To Rethink Chicago’s Housing Projects
The Black Ledger takes place in the early 1980s. By this time, Chicago’s public housing already had a sordid, racially charged history rife with crime, drugs, and despair. Subsidized housing proved a temporary solution among downtrodden Chicagoans, who, due to systemic racism, were predominately Black. Chicago’s Public Housing Authority crammed impoverished Black citizens into massive, prison-like apartment complexes, soon ignoring the new neighborhoods they built.
White residents, comfortable in their middle-class bubbles, blissfully continued their lives. The housing projects allowed white Americans to disregard problems plaguing the Black community, often assuming financial woes were self-created and not products of systemic racism.
The Intersectionality Between Race, Poverty, & Capitalism
The Black Ledger forces readers to confront the reality of racism, poverty, and capitalism in America. Allen juxtaposes lower-middle-class working blond-haired, blue-eyed white man Ron Pickles with the Black families he meets in public housing, often facing similar poverty-driven issues. The compelling crime drama puts a face on socioeconomic struggles, showing it’s not white versus Black but poor versus wealthy.
“This is not a black story,” says Allen. “This is not a story about African Americans. It’s a story about a 20-year-old kid who, in order to make a living to support his family, took a job he knew nothing about and landed in the heart of the ghetto.”
Pickles’ work forces him to confront the truth about white America’s impact on Black communities. The young white man readers meet at the story’s start soon confronts his biased beliefs as he solves a horrific crime that took the life of a woman he loved. Pickles’ experience changes him, and readers watch the story unfold through his eyes.
The Black Ledger: New and Improved
Allen originally published The Black Ledger in 2017 as an independent author, selling the books via Amazon’s print-on-demand service. The book garnered more than 400 reviews, a 4.4 rating on Amazon, and a 4.3 rating on Goodreads, an incredible feat considering most self-published books receive fewer than 100 sales.
A year after its release, Visceral Entertainment Company in New York optioned the work, intending to produce a film or TV series. Allen refused a renewal, instead deciding to promote the novel on his terms with a professionally edited edition and brand-new audiobook to ensure his story reaches new audiences.
His passion comes to light when talking about the new edition. Allen says, “I fell in love with this woman, and she was brutally murdered. She was a client I got to know very well; she was a lovely young lady with hopes and dreams, and her life was cut short.”
“It’s not only the sadness I felt upon hearing about her murder; it’s the shock, the bone-chilling horror I felt. I was banging on her door, and she didn’t answer because she was dead. They took her body away the day before. The horror of that realization that I’d never see her again, that I’d never speak to her again, paralyzed me. It still affects me to this day,” he shares.
Allen adds that he sees the same situation repeatedly in the national news and feels disheartened that nothing has changed in the 40 years since the tragedy. White America continues to ignore systemic racism’s role in many Black Americans’ suffering.
Voice Acting the Audio Book
Allen reads and voice-acts for the new audiobook. Given his work’s racially charged themes and primarily Black characters, he struggled with whether to do it himself or hire black actors.
“When I started thinking about the audiobook, I started reaching out to voice actors, and unfortunately, I could not afford them. It was either I waited and hoped that one day I’d have enough money to do it right, or I just did it myself in my living room as best as I could,” he shares. “The story is too important to me for it not to get done. Because this young lady died, and it haunted me for my entire life.”
The new audiobook and updated novel are available via DG Allen’s website.
