Author: Kim Johnson
Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Audible release date: July 28, 2020
My Thoughts:
I got this book in the mail, but I want to give it to one of my English teacher alum so I didn't want to read the hard copy so I got access to this audiobook. This book is a realistic fiction look at one teenʻs social justice advocacy for her family. Tracy, 17, does workshops for the Innocence X organization in order to try and get her father off of death row. When this book opens, she is running out of time to save her father. If this were the only issue, it would make a novel.
But this is only one problem. Jamal, her older brother is on the run after he is accused of killing Angela. As a family, they are victims of racist terrorism including a cross burning in their front yard. Any of these issues could make a novel. The fact that everything is in this novel, including an interracial love triangle makes this a hefty 9 hour commitment to justice, equity and hope.
This could be part of a literature circle option alongside The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and Dear Martin by Nic Stone, I'm Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal and Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
From the Publisher:
Every week, 17-year-old Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X, asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time - her dad has only 267 days left. Then the unthinkable happens. The police arrive in the night, and Tracy's older brother, Jamal, goes from being a bright, promising track star to a "thug" on the run, accused of killing a white girl. Determined to save her brother, Tracy investigates what really happened between Jamal and Angela down at the Pike. But will Tracy and her family survive the uncovering of the skeletons of their Texas town's racist history that still haunt the present?
Fans of Nic Stone, Tiffany D. Jackson, and Jason Reynolds won't want to miss this provocative and gripping debut.
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