“With Eyes From Both Sides” examines the life of Thelma Wright, as a youngster growing up in South Philly with loving parents and a wholesome Catholic upbringing; blind to the changing nature of her neighborhood in the sixties, and then as a young woman who falls into what she calls “crazy love” with one of the City’s purported kingpins of Philadelphia’s flourishing drug trade in the seventies and early eighties. When her husband, Jackie Wright is murdered, Thelma becomes a major player in the game, a veritable queen-pin, running major drug operations from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.

The story is divided into sections delineated by a few words or a sentence which aptly describes the series of chapters contained therein. For example, the chapters in which her relationship with her husband is told in vivid detail are part of the section described as “Crazy Love.” Thelma tells her story through thoughtful introspection, calling upon hindsight’s retrospective crystal clarity to weave a story of love, hate, jealousy, and murder; by day, a loving mother, devoted to her son, and by night, a dynamic powerbroker, a mover, working deals with other major movers on the low for most and in plain sight only for those in her inner circle.

105.3 WDAS Interview with Patty Jackson