A Stone of Hope: A Memoir
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Description
In the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and Just Mercy, a searing memoir and clarion call to save our at-risk youth by a young black man who himself was a lost cause—until he landed in a rehabilitation program that saved his life and gave him purpose.
Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of fifteen the walls of the system were closing around him.
But instead of prison, St. Germain was placed in "Boys Town," a nonsecure detention facility designed for rehabilitation. Surrounded by mentors and positive male authority who enforced a system based on structure and privileges rather than intimidation and punishment, St. Germain slowly found his way, eventually getting his GED and graduating from college. Then he made the bravest decision of his life: to live, as an adult, in the projects where he had lost himself, and to work to reform the way the criminal justice system treats at-risk youth.
A Stone of Hope is more than an incredible coming-of-age story; told with a degree of candor that requires the deepest courage, it is also a rallying cry. No one is who they are going to be—or capable of being—at sixteen. St. Germain is living proof of this. He contends that we must work to build a world in which we do not give up on a swath of the next generation.
Passionate, eloquent, and timely, illustrated with photographs throughout, A Stone of Hope is an inspiring challenge for every American, and is certain to spark debate nationwide.
Formats
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
More Copies In LINK+
More Details
Reviews from GoodReads
Citations
Jim St. Germain. (2017). A Stone of Hope: A Memoir. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Jim St. Germain. 2017. A Stone of Hope: A Memoir. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Jim St. Germain, A Stone of Hope: A Memoir. HarperCollins, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Jim St. Germain. A Stone of Hope: A Memoir. HarperCollins, 2017.
Copy Details
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
Staff View
QR Code
API Extraction Dates
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062458810
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B01MECC8RK
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062458810
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Jim St. Germain
- title
- A Stone of Hope
- dateAdded
- 2017-10-13T19:05:41.54Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=2996341
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Stone of Hope A Memoir
- crossRefId
- 2996341
- subtitle
- A Memoir
- id
- 1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5
- starRating
- 4.5
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: AStoneofHope_9780062458810_2996341
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 3873357
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062458810
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 1
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 7/4/2017
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=1f99fe5a-1597-4d64-be2f-d99d263378d5&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: AStoneofHope_2996341
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B01MECC8RK
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 7/4/2017
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=1f99fe5a-1597-4d64-be2f-d99d263378d5&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: AStoneofHope_9780062458810_2996341
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 3873333
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062458810
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 7/4/2017
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=1f99fe5a-1597-4d64-be2f-d99d263378d5&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: St. Germain, Jim
- bioText: Jim St. Germain is the cofounder of Preparing Leaders of Tomorrow (PLOT), a nonprofit organization that provides mentoring to at-risk youth; and a board member with the National Juvenile Defender Center. He works as a residential care advocate for the City of New York, and was appointed by President Obama to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Jim lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his son, Caleb.
- name: Jim St. Germain
- role: Author
- fileAs: Sternfeld, Jon
- bioText: Jon Sternfeld is a writer whose work includes Crisis Point: Why We Must—and How We Can—Overcome Our Broken Politics in Washington and Across America with Senators Trent Lott and Tom Daschle and Strong in the Broken Places with Quentin Vennie. He lives in New York.
- name: Jon Sternfeld
- imprint
- Harper Audio
- publishDate
- 2017-07-04T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- A Stone of Hope
- fullDescription
In the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and Just Mercy, a searing memoir and clarion call to save our at-risk youth by a young black man who himself was a lost cause—until he landed in a rehabilitation program that saved his life and gave him purpose.
Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of fifteen the walls of the system were closing around him.
But instead of prison, St. Germain was placed in "Boys Town," a nonsecure detention facility designed for rehabilitation. Surrounded by mentors and positive male authority who enforced a system based on structure and privileges rather than intimidation and punishment, St. Germain slowly found his way, eventually getting his GED and graduating from college. Then he made the bravest decision of his life: to live, as an adult, in the projects where he had lost himself, and to work to reform the way the criminal justice system treats at-risk youth.
A Stone of Hope is more than an incredible coming-of-age story; told with a degree of candor that requires the deepest courage, it is also a rallying cry. No one is who they are going to be—or capable of being—at sixteen. St. Germain is living proof of this. He contends that we must work to build a world in which we do not give up on a swath of the next generation.
Passionate, eloquent, and timely, illustrated with photographs throughout, A Stone of Hope is an inspiring challenge for every American, and is certain to spark debate nationwide.
- reviews
- premium: False
- source: James Forman Jr., GQ
- content:
"I can't stop talking about A Stone of Hope, written by Jim St. Germain and Jon Sternfeld. St. Germain suffered childhood trauma that would break most people. He sold drugs, fought, and was repeatedly arrested. But he also found people in a group home who treasured him, and helped him reclaim himself. Imagining alternatives to America's monstrous criminal system requires that we listen to people who have been inside—people like St. Germain." — James Forman Jr., GQ
"[A] potent new memoir...What distinguishes [Stone of Hope] is the perceptive acuity with which he narrates his personal journey through the 'system,' and explains how he was able... to skirt its usual outcomes." — Vice
"Achingly candid, authentically insightful and compellingly optimistic, A Stone of Hope is destined to help move mountains." — Shelf Awareness
"[Jim St. Germain] vividly describes the fear and loneliness of life in Brooklyn without his parents.... Like Wes Moore's The Other Wes Moore, St. Germain's gritty and self-reflective memoir is an excellent and informative cautionary tale." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An affecting and earnest testimonial to the power of a humane criminal system built on rehabilitation more than punishment." — Kirkus
"Jim's story is visceral and unsparingly honest. Ultimately it is one of transformation and—most important—hope." — Booklist
"Near the end of A Stone of Hope, a passage describes the value of young people–all young people–to society. As in all the rest of this book, the words sing: with painful trauma experienced and overcome, profound knowledge of the human condition, and deep empathy. Jim St. Germain is particularly artful in shining light on the small moments and minute decisions and seemingly innocuous interactions that can doom a life or bring it to blossom. This is tremendous and courageous storytelling that, one hopes, will touch many lives with positivity in the way Germain's was touched." — Jeff Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
"This book is a new perspective on the all-too-familiar story of an inner-city black boy left to go bad. First, we see clearly through the boy's incisive eye how the grinding machinery of poverty cripples so many young lives. Second, despite the odds, the boy overcomes them and goes good, drawing on his experiences to try to save the next endangered generation. It's a frightening but ultimately hopeful story." — Geoffrey Canada, president, Harlem Children's Zone
"Which, on reflection, feels true. Life is not a training montage from a "Rocky" movie. It is trial and error, setback and achievement. So if you graphed St. Germain's progress from what he was to what he is, the resulting line might resemble the stock exchange during a bull market — jagged but rising." — Wall Street Journal
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
Starred review from May 29, 2017
In his first book, St. Germain, cofounder of the nonprofit group Preparing Leaders of Tomorrow, describes growing up in Brooklyn’s violent Crown Heights neighborhood. St. Germain was born in Haiti but moved to the U.S. with his siblings in 2000. Writing with journalist Sternfeld (Crisis Point), he vividly describes the fear and loneliness of life in Brooklyn without his parents, the adjustment to his grandmother’s cramped apartment, and, as he got older, how he negotiated the violent gangster world of the Crips and Bloods. St. Germain longed for a male role model, and concedes that his grandmother, as hard as she tried, couldn’t keep him honest amid the “tight-jeaned girls and hustling corner dudes.” He describes himself as follows: “From a young age, I’d been a social chameleon with a survival mentality.” He began stealing, robbing, dealing drugs, and allowing “the game to suck him in like a vacuum.” At age 15 he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, but instead of going to prison he was sent to a detention and rehabilitation facility, where he was mentored, educated, and learned to embrace a sense of self-worth. He soon became an advocate for at-risk children. Like Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore, St. Germain’s gritty and self-reflective memoir is an excellent and informative cautionary tale.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
May 15, 2017
A young African-American man's memoir of a life of crime redirected.Born poor in Haiti, St. Germain came to America with his family as a youth and, in the streets of Brooklyn, lost himself in the illegal economy that thrived on the streets. He fought and stole, "trying to process this new world and answer my own questions, all the while wearing a tight mask that showed none of this." As a self-styled "street pharmacist," he earned the nickname Buffett, because, as a helpful older friend explained, "Warren Buffett is gangsta," a model money machine among the Scarface crowd. Rather than becoming filthy rich, as that name portended, St. Germain fell into the system, winding up in Spofford Juvenile Center in the Bronx, "a notorious intake place for troubled teens" whose alumni included Mike Tyson and rapper Fat Joe. But there, St. Germain was given an opportunity: rather than the normal machine of turning broken youth into broken men, he was placed in the Boys Town boot camp system, which teaches values of responsibility and respect. Said a staff member, "the purpose here is to retrain your behavior," and retrain St. Germain's behavior it did. "It went against everything I'd ever known," he writes. At first, he went along with it to game the system and gain the merit points that earned privileges, but eventually he became a committed advocate of the system--and, moreover, a devotee of reading and education, guided by books of African-American history and in particular a memoir called Dreams of My Father, affording St. Germain "a kinship with this mixed-race senator with a foreign background, a funny name, and the gall to think he could change the world." An affecting and earnest testimonial to the power of a humane criminal system built on rehabilitation more than punishment.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
March 1, 2017
Born impoverished in Haiti and raised by an alcoholic father in Brooklyn's Crown Heights, St. Germain was a convicted felon by age 15. Fortunately, he was placed in a nonsecure detention facility and through good mentoring got his GED and a college degree. Then he returned to Crown Heights to help youngsters like his former self. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- popularity
- 97
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/1f99fe5a-1597-4d64-be2f-d99d263378d5/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- shareInLibby:
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/share?q=dbgtAMShdiw
- type: text/HTML
- self:
- id
- 1f99fe5a-1597-4d64-be2f-d99d263378d5
- starRating
- 4.4
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0293-1/{1F99FE5A-1597-4D64-BE2F-D99D263378D5}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Biography & Autobiography
- value: Politics
- value: Nonfiction
- publishDateText
- 07/04/2017
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9780062458803
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
In the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and Just Mercy, a searing memoir and clarion call to save our at-risk youth by a young black man who himself was a lost cause—until he landed in a rehabilitation program that saved his life and gave him purpose.
Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of fifteen the walls of the system were closing around him.
But instead of prison, St. Germain was placed in "Boys Town," a nonsecure detention facility designed for rehabilitation. Surrounded by mentors and positive male authority who enforced a system based on structure and privileges rather than intimidation and...
- sortTitle
- Stone of Hope A Memoir
- crossRefId
- 2996341
- subtitle
- A Memoir
- publisher
- HarperCollins
- bisacCodes
- code: BIO026000
- description: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
- code: POL004000
- description: Political Science / Civil Rights
- code: BIO002010
- description: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / African American & Black