A GOOD PLAN

An American war veteran shares his faith and his plans to help families and communities in this debut nonfiction work.

Carter grew up in a large African American family in New Jersey and went on to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield. He came out of his military experience viewing the “world as a gift,” and he had a new determination to try to make the world a better place. His book has the tone of a long sermon—one that emphasizes the importance of self-love as a pathway to personal freedom. Along the way, he takes men who treat women poorly to task and offers a mea culpa for his own failings in relationships while referring to women he knows as “queens.” Finally, the text outlines his plans for the creation of two private foundations—a “family foundation” that would seek to improve communities by better documenting family histories, and a nonprofit publishing company that would focus on putting out a book that addresses a range of problems in such areas as health care and education, and he discusses how such a corporation would be managed. Carter’s enthusiasm for his faith pervades the book, and his call to duty is infectious. However, although it repeatedly cites self-love as a goal, it offers no tips or exercises for achieving it, outside of embracing faith. The text offers a strict definition of a nuclear family as a man and a woman with children, and occasionally directly mentions the African American community, but otherwise offers only vague indicators of who the book’s intended audience is. The author’s proposal for two companies is intriguing, but the book’s shift from self-help to personal business planning is jarring and only serves to make its overall purpose less clear.

An earnest but underdeveloped work about faith and family.