For four decades, Johnisha Matthews Levi believed a conventional story about her birth, picturing her happy parents at the hospital together. While sorting through her late mother's belongings, however, she discovered a document indicating that her father was instead serving time in Lorton Correctional Complex. This revelation, along with rumors about an FBI investigation of her deceased parents' "private business," leads Levi to unearth the hidden history of her family. She ties this story to public policy, demonstrating how state lottery legalization and the War on Drugs disrupted the Black institutions and communities in Washington, DC.

Levi's stirring memoir centers on her brilliant but troubled father, a Black World War II radioman who, facing economic barriers after his naval service, reinvents himself as a "numbers man" for an underground gambling operation. The job enables John Matthews to provide for his loved ones and to achieve a level of success far beyond his childhood dreams in the impoverished Jim Crow South. In the process, he becomes an indirect target of law enforcement.

By examining the circumstances of her father's incarceration, Levi explores how multiple generations of the Matthews family have been haunted by the specter of violence against Black people.

The book is published by The University Press of Kentucky. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"A provocative book that will transform its readers."—Neil Roberts, coeditor of Creolizing Hannah Arendt

"A beautiful story of love and struggle told with courage and heart by a compelling —Paula Blackman, author of Night Train to Nashville

"This memoir will change the way readers see the world..."—Andrew Maraniss, New York Times bestselling author of Strong Inside