If hope for ending gun violence can take hold in Chicago’s South Side, then it can take hold anywhere. The impoverished neighborhoods there are among the most dangerous in all of America—a nation in which injuries from firearms are the top reason why children die.

In 2018, after decades of treating patients in inner cities that have suffered from decades of disinvestment and institutional racism, Dr. Selwyn Rogers founded a trauma center in the battleground known by many as “Chiraq.” He has treated thousands of people suffering from gunshot wounds. He’s told loved ones that they lost a child, a father, a dear friend. And he’s initiated change in the community, talking to those in the middle of what can feel like endless bloodshed.

Healing the Gun Violence Epidemic shares the stories of the victims Dr. Rogers has met in his work, and the lessons he’s taken from bearing witness to so much trauma. The book traces the origins of gun violence in the South Side—including decades of generational poverty bred from too little aid—and compares the lives of the young people he treats to his’ own path: from humble beginnings to using his Ivy League education to aid others and, he hopes, to end the cycles that have kept countless people trapped in never-ending agony. In the end, Dr. Rogers shares his insights into what policies have failed and which solutions have succeeded—making him believe that the devastation and trauma can end—not just in Chicago, but across the United States.