Steven Wilmsen sits on the metro desk, overseeing special projects. He came to the Globe in October 1997, working as a business investigative reporter and covering City Hall before moving to editing. He has been enterprise editor since 2007. He grew up in Colorado, harbors an obsession for Mexican food and occasionally pines for the West, where they know how to make it. He is the author of a book, “Silverado: Neil Bush and the Savings and Loan Scandal” about the former president's son and the failure of a Colorado savings and loan, and several magazine narratives. Recent awards for Globe projects include the National Headliner Award, Casey Medal, and Dart Award.

Articles

Mayhem has a kind of momentum; it can be exhausting to resist. In Bowdoin-Geneva, an anticrime effort flops. And Big Nate explodes. But the peace festival rocks, and a son in jail has started to pray.

There were 19 shootings in Bowdoin-Geneva this year, but no one was killed. Here, that seems a step ahead. But progress, if real, feels like a fragile reed in a garden furrowed deep with promise and pain.

On Hendry Street, a new sense of stability is unraveling. On Norton, a gang target plans a peace festival, which police fear will only draw trouble. Nothing is easy in Bowdoin-Geneva, but no one is giving in.

In the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood of Boston, violence seems to rise with the heat, but so do a mother’s hopes for her children, and a priest’s quest to connect. Meanwhile, from the weeds, an unlikely garden grows.

It’s a neighborhood known for trouble, but the Bowdoin-Geneva area of Boston is much more than that. A Boston Globe team spent a year there, listening and asking why violence persists where love and loyalty also run so strong.