‘Stand Your Ground’ Spins Riveting Read-Out of Problematic Premise

By Michael Malone

I ended up reading “Stand Your Ground,” about a Black teen who is shot dead by a white man, after visiting my mother. She read the Victoria Christopher Murray novel with her book group, was perplexed by the ending and asked me to give it a read and share my opinion.

Marquis Johnson, a student at a private Philadelphia high school, is killed early in the book. It is page 9 when a pair of police officers knock on the Johnsons’ door with dreadful news.

Marquis is a good kid, and he’s headed for an Ivy League university in a matter of months. He was with his girlfriend, who is white. They parked in a suburban neighborhood and downed some fast food and chatted.

A homeowner came outside to see why a car was parked in front of his house. He thought the girl might’ve been in distress, and asked if she was OK.

Marquis told the man, Wyatt, to buzz off, and he did not. Marquis got out of the car to confront him, and was shot.

“Was [Wyatt] standing his ground,” the book’s back cover asks, “or was it murder?”

“Stand Your Ground” is about how parents deal with the unexpected loss of a child, how the legal system handles a shooting with questionable circumstances and how the media portrays a case with racial implications.

A New Yorker, Murray’s novels include “Forever an Ex,” “Sinners & Saints” and “Lady Jasmine.” She writes a ‘Why I Wrote “Stand Your Ground’” essay that prefaces the book, which was published in 2015. Murray lists various cases where young Black men were killed and how the self-defense platform known as Stand Your Ground tied into the cases. She has major issues with Stand Your Ground.

“It wasn’t writing this book alone that changed me – it was that I was halfway through when Eric Garner was choked to death in New York and then Michael Brown was executed on the streets of Ferguson,” she writes. “I wrote this novel while those incidents and their aftermath played as background music in my mind.”

Murray writes from the perspective of Marquis’s mother Janice. Her son’s murder strains her marriage. She adores husband Tyrone, but after the death he’s spending more and more time with his brother Raj. Janice despises Raj. He used to date her best friend Syreeta, but was abusive. He also runs with an advocacy group known as the Brown Guardians that at times dabbles in street violence.

Janice is adamant that Raj and the Brown Guardians not make Marquis’s death even worse by causing more pain and violence.

Complicating Janice and Tyrone’s marriage is the affair she had with her pastor years before, a man who reaches out to Janice, in her time of need, to offer his support.

Murray writes of Janice and Tyrone at the funeral home, paying a final visit to their son: “There was an angelic peace over Marquis. He looked like he was asleep. He looked like he was happy. He looked like he’d seen the face of God.”

Murray shakes things up when the narrative shifts from Janice’s point of view to that of Meredith, the wife of the man who killed Marquis. Wyatt is middle-aged and wealthy, thanks to a successful chain of restaurants called Cheesesteak Castle. (Hey, it’s Philly.) Meredith is young and beautiful. A struggling waitress, she serves Wyatt’s party in a restaurant. He returns every day to get to know her better. Seeing promise in Meredith, he sends her to college, hires her and ends up marrying her.

Meredith knows the self-defense story Wyatt told investigators is not entirely truthful. She’s loyal to her husband, who saved her from a miserable life. Will she stay loyal as the court case heats up and all of America seems to be watching? Or will she do the right thing?

Wyatt and Meredith don’t seem to be flat-out racists, but they’re hardly colorblind either. The white characters in the book range from overt racists to more casual ones.

Maybe entertaining isn’t quite the right word for a book about an innocent teen being killed, but I thoroughly enjoyed “Stand Your Ground.” The book has averaged a whopping 4.37, out of 5, from 1,347 ranking readers on GoodReads. Reviews in traditional media are almost non-existent. Targeting Black readers, Murray’s vast oeuvre includes romance and Christian lit.

I did have some issues with “Stand Your Ground.” Wyatt is very, very wealthy, to the point where money really is no object. I don’t know that he could accumulate such wealth from a trio of quick-service cheesesteak places – even in Philly.

And Janice and Tyrone consume vast quantities of media as Wyatt’s court case unfolds. Wyatt’s lawyers spill sketchy details to reporters, and the local TV stations air stories about Janice’s affair and rumors of “illegal activity” at Tyrone’s car repair shop and Raj’s multiple arrests for domestic violence. Surely some bloggers would run with racist and irrelevant stories, but I’m thinking your local TV station newsrooms hold themselves to a higher standard.

But “Stand Your Ground” is well-paced with real emotion. Murray constructs a riveting story out of a very difficult topic.

And that ending that so perplexed my mother? It confounded me, too. After Wyatt’s trial concludes, something scary happens. But who was behind it?

Murray isn’t saying. Readers can use their own imaginations.

Journalist Michael Malone lives in Hawthorne with his wife and two children.