This one broke me. As a younger sibling, as a empath, as a parent, and as a teacher. I felt the pain and loss that Trace is constantly going through. I feel that this is an amazing resource for our students who know that their friends or family might be doing something they know is wrong and they can’t reconcile the person standing before them with the person they love. It is powerful and I am grateful for the impact I know it will have on our students.
Twelve-year-old Trace Reynolds has always looked up to his brother, mostly because Will, who’s five years older, has never looked down on him. It was Will who taught Trace to ride a bike, would watch sports on TV with him, and cheer him on at Little League. But when Will was knocked out cold during a football game, resulting in a brain injury–everything changed. Now, seventeen months later, their family is still living under the weight of “the incident,” that left Will with a facial tic, depression, and an anger he cannot always control, culminating in their parents’ divorce. Afraid of further fracturing his family, Trace begins to cover for Will who, struggling with addiction to pain medication, becomes someone Trace doesn’t recognize. But when the brother he loves so much becomes more and more withdrawn, and escalates to stealing money and ditching school, Trace realizes some secrets cannot be kept if we ever hope to heal.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, Amazon
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