“The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League”

by Jeff Hobbs (Scribner, 406 pages., $27)

Jeff Hobbs and Robert Peace were roommates throughout their four years at Yale, class of 2002. Their friendship got off to a slightly bumpy start. Hobbs, a wealthy, second-generation Yalie who grew up in a house with a pool, had the impression that his future roommate came from a similar background, perhaps because Rob Peace had gone to a prep school and played water polo. But Rob was a black kid from a ghetto called Illtown, just outside Newark, New Jersey. And when they compared their fathers’ occupations, Jeff said “surgeon.” Rob said “inmate,” tactfully leaving out “convicted murderer.”

Rob started out in this world with no advantages except for good looks, tremendous intelligence, a charismatic father and a tirelessly self-sacrificing mother, Jackie, who devoted every day of her life to trying to give her son a better one. In “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace,” a haunting work of nonfiction with a title that is all too self-explanatory, Hobbs movingly captures Jackie Peace’s unwavering devotion to her boy.

This was not a case of a thwarted adult trying to fulfill her dreams through her child. Jackie was strong-willed to begin with, and she knew enough not to marry Skeet Douglas, Rob’s father. Skeet trafficked in drugs, and Jackie knew it would be damaging to have her son grow up in that atmosphere. But when Skeet went to prison for the gruesome murders of two women — convicted by evidence that seemed inconclusive at best, even to the judge — she made sure Rob and Skeet saw each other weekly. Depriving a boy of his father would have hurt him badly, too.

This book is full of unanswerable questions about why Rob Peace’s life took the path it did, and whether anything could have been done to save him. He was a supernova at an early age, already nicknamed “the professor” as a 3-year-old in day care. When Jackie found out what public school was like in East Orange, New Jersey, where they lived, she scrimped enough to get him a Catholic school education. He was such a brilliant student, and such an exemplar of fine character, that Charles Cawley, a wealthy banker who heard his keynote address as a high school senior, approached him to say, “You can go to college wherever you want.”

Rob badly wanted to go to Johns Hopkins. But his mother, who worked in a hospital cafeteria, was penalized and made to work late for wearing the wrong hairnet on the day that applications were due. She got to the post office 10 minutes after midnight, missed Johns Hopkins’ deadline, and destined her boy to go to Yale instead.

Would the choice of school have made any difference? Maybe: Rob liked Johns Hopkins’ Baltimore location, because it felt more like home. The Yale campus was alien to him, and he made it more so by wearing dreadlocks and a menacing nylon cap, a look about as anti-prep as he could get. He also began commuting to Newark to buy marijuana to sell on campus and spent a good part of his college career stoned and partying. Still, he had a real love for subjects such as molecular biophysics and biochemistry. A friend from Newark also at Yale wondered why Rob stayed so quiet about his academic success but made so much noise about his drug exploits.

As a member of Elihu, one of Yale’s secret societies, Rob shocked his fellow members just before college ended. He told a four-hour version of his father’s terrible story, which was just one big thing about Rob that none of them had ever known. They left school realizing what an unknown quantity he was and having no idea what kind of future plans he had. He spoke vaguely about wanting to go to Rio de Janeiro, but what kind of career goal was that? What none of them realized was that he had amassed more than $100,000 in drug money during those college years.

He did go to Rio and enjoyed its sunny hedonism for a while. But the arc of his life had changed course, and he knew it. His days as a rising star were over. Now, in the absence of another bright idea, he had nowhere to go but down. And Hobbs, who kept in touch but didn’t stay close enough to know much about his postcollege experiences firsthand, simply lays out the circumstantial evidence of what began to happen.

Piecing together interviews with Jackie, other relatives and the many, many friends of the gregarious Rob, Hobbs writes in a forthright but not florid way about a heartbreaking story. He captures the ways in which doors began to close for Rob and making money became less a pastime than an urgent obsession. When Rob got a job with Continental Airlines that brought him close to the baggage-handling process, put him on a friendly basis with security personnel and let him fly standby at off hours, he was in a perfect position to start smuggling in a major way. Yet those Yale friends who knew he worked for Continental just assumed he was sitting behind a desk somewhere.

Had Rob re-entered a comfort zone, the one he had known Skeet to inhabit when he was a little boy? (Rob was only 7 when Skeet was incarcerated from the family.) Had he lost confidence in himself for some other reason? Had the drugs become such a temptation that they sapped him of all ambition? Hobbs does a fascinating job of raising these questions, even though he cannot possibly answer them.

Rob was never so far gone that he forgot to repay his debt to Jackie; he took care of his elderly grandparents after he left college, so that she could have some relief. On the other hand, when he drove past Jackie’s house at night and saw that another man in the family was there to watch over her, his car didn’t stop. He just checked on her and drove away. Shame? Fear? Other business to attend to? That other business was very dangerous. It’s the reason he’ll never be able to explain.