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Jeff Hobbs ’02: death of a roommate

Robert Peace ’02 was A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League. That's the subtitle of a forthcoming book by his Yale roommate, Jeff Hobbs ’02. The main title tells the rest of the story: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace.

Hobbs, a novelist, decided to write the nonfiction account after attending Peace’s funeral in 2011. With a degree in molecular biochemistry and biophysics, Peace had returned to Newark to teach at the Catholic school he’d graduated from. But he started using his science background to grow marijuana, got into the drug trade, and was murdered at age 30.

Although the book won't be out until September, it was featured on an “Editors Buzz” panel May 28 at the opening of the annual BookExpo America. One editor touted it as “ambitious and big-hearted,” “troubling and impossible to put down.”

And the panel’s moderator noted that while “literally” and “tragedy” are overused words, “this this book was ‘literally a tragedy’ on the level of the classic Greek works,” according to Publishers Weekly.

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The Yale Alumni Magazine is published by Yale Alumni Publications Inc., an alumni-based nonprofit that is not run by Yale University. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration.

Filed under Jeff Hobbs, Robert Peace
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