17-year-old best friends Sasha, a black teenager and Leah, a white teen are two girls from affluent backgrounds and live comfortable lives, attending a well-established private Christian academy in St Louis. As they enter their final year, the main things occupying their minds are graduating and their senior prom.
But the lives of two popular girls are about to undergo a transition that neither of them wanted or expected when Mitchell, a young African-American boy from the city’s East View High School is shot and killed while walking home from a basketball game, by a police officer who had mistaken him for someone else.
Now tensions are rising among the community where he lived, and the citizens of St. Louis are angry.
One night, while Sasha is out, she sees her old childhood friend, Ricardo, who is protesting the death of Mitchell. Curious about him and wondering if there is anything, she could do to become involved, Sasha talks to her friends about it.
They aren’t interested in getting involved however, and Sasha’s parents also forbid her from doing anything. As the closely held views she once had are quickly evaporating, Sasha makes a momentous decision and goes against all the advice she is given.
She decides to go against her parents and friends and protest downtown with Ricardo and his friends, Rashad and Victoria, who all attended East View High School. When Sasha feels like her friends have turned against her Ricardo and his friends are there for her.
But her determination to fight for justice for Mitchell causes a rift in her relationships. An argument with Leah drives a wedge between them and leads Leah to take the opposite viewpoint, taking sides with those who are supporting different viewpoints, while Sasha’s boyfriend is jealous of the time she is spending with Ricardo and breaks off their relationship.
But there’s a bigger problem that neither girl knows about the groups they support. A war has been going on for several months between them and now Sasha and Leah have been sucked into it by their new friends.
Realizing her error, Sasha tries to reach out to Leah, but her friend’s stubbornness prevents her from accepting the olive branch and Sasha has to accept that the friendship is at an end.
Then, one night, a confrontation in a club leads to Rashad being severely beaten by Jacob and Joshua, two of Leah’s group.
Leah witnesses the assault and tries to intervene but is threatened by them and pushed to the ground. Now fearful of repercussions Leah turns to Sasha for help, knowing that her father is a lawyer.
She goes to the police station to tell the truth, which puts her and her family in danger from Jacob and Joshua, so her parents send her to their private lake house in the Ozarks, which nobody knows about. Her friends Leo, Sasha and Cameron accompany her for her safety and to talk over what happened during the summer.
Leah and Sasha become friends again. Sasha has a big going away to college cookout, which she invites her friends she met this summer and her friends from her school. This is when they all say their farewells and discuss the views of protesting and get Sasha’s dad’s thoughts on the matter.
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Author Bio:
Kimberley is a professional early childhood educator. She was born in the small town of Saint George, South Carolina, on September 12, 1982. Graduated from Woodland High School in 2000, Benedict College in 2004 with B.S., Child & Family Development, and from Ashford University in 2013 with a Masters in Early Childhood Education.
After receiving her education and being a military spouse, I held several jobs as a preschool teacher and a preschool director, but she wanted to her education to use by writing children’s books. I wrote my first book in college for my children’s literature course. I have self-published several children books located on Amazon.
Currently, I branch off into writing fiction YA, NA, and A novels on issues in society. I love writing and would not change it for nothing in this world I am now representing Rhetoric Askew, a great publishing company.