WHEN CRACK BABIES GROW UP (QUICKIE EBOOK SERIES)

By: ALI ROCK

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

At seven years old, Aaliyah loses her mother to addiction in a quiet Gastonia night that changes everything. With nothing but a paper bag of belongings, she is placed into the home of an affluent Black family in Charlotte—two professionals, a doctor and an architect, raising a daughter already destined for greatness.

What no one expects is that the girl they call a “crack baby” is brilliant.

As Aaliyah rises through elite schools and ultimately Harvard, her intelligence doesn’t just rival the best—it outpaces them. But success doesn’t erase memory. While others chase prestige, Aaliyah remembers the kitchen where her mother cooked through pain, the food that held love together when life fell apart.

Instead of chasing corporate approval, Aaliyah builds something rooted in truth: Mama’s Table, a chain of healthy soul food restaurants that honor tradition without destroying the body. What begins as one location becomes a movement—feeding communities, restoring dignity, and redefining what success looks like.

Then one night, a face on television stops her cold.

Her mother—clean, changed, and alive.

Forced to confront the past she survived and the family she lost, Aaliyah returns to Gastonia not as a broken child, but as a woman who has built something real. What follows is not a story of easy forgiveness, but of accountability, growth, and the hard truth that healing doesn’t mean forgetting—it means choosing what comes next.

When Crack Babies Grow Up is a powerful, grounded novel about intelligence, class, addiction, Black excellence, and the quiet strength it takes to build a future without denying where you came from.