Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block

After twenty years as a foreign correspondent in tumultuous locales, Judith Matloff is ready to return to her native New York City and start a family with her husband, John. Intoxicated by West Harlem’s cultural diversity and, more important, its affordability, Judith impulsively buys a stately fixer-upper brownstone in the neighborhood–only to discover that this dream house was once a crack den and that calling it a “fixer upper” is an understatement. Thus begins the couple’s odyssey to win over brazen drug dealers, delinquent construction workers, and eccentric neighbors in one of the biggest drug zones in the country. It’s a far cry from utopia, but it’s a start, and Judith and John do all they can to carve out a comfortable life–and, over time, come to appreciate the neighborhood’s rough charms. A wry, reflective, and hugely entertaining memoir, Home Girl is for anyone who has longed to go home, however complicated the journey.