Fortnight on Maxwell Street

by David Kerns

A Gripping and an Emotionally Poignant Story!

Fortnight on Maxwell Street by David Kerns is an intriguing book as it gives an inside view of what happened during the 1968 racial tensions in Chicago.  As a medical student, just weeks away from becoming a full-fledged doctor, Nick Weissman must spend the next few weeks delivering babies in homes located in unsafe, dangerous neighborhoods found in the inner city of Chicago. 

Almost mirrored each move that Nick makes, we see James Earl Ray move almost in alignment.    Faced with growing racial tensions and chaos created by Ray, Nick must face his fear and decide what type of man/doctor he intends to be. When no one else is willing to travel the streets during this chaotic time, Nick puts his fear aside and steps up to help a young Black girl and her babies who are facing death during an unsafe and unsupervised home delivery. 

Kerns does a magnificent job of portraying hatred, danger, and tension – the chaos that reigned is vivid in his rich details and character/plot development.  Kerns captures the unrest and fear, the dreadful conditions of inner-city life, inequality, and racial divide of the time as only a skilled storyteller can.  While suspenseful, the book is a reminder that we as a people have not moved much in our thinking or actions since then thus making this a highly emotional and poignant story.

The narrator, Doug MacKechnie, gives an excellent performance moving the story along as the book progresses.  His voices are well done and capture the fear and confusion of the characters well.  MacKechnie’s strong voices gave credibility to each character.

There were no issues with the production or quality of this audiobook. It was clear and well done.

I highly recommend this book; a bit slow in the beginning it quickly picks up keeping the listener intrigued. 

Disclaimer: This Audiobook was provided free of charge by the author, narrator, and/or publisher in exchange for a non-bias, honest review.