Another Coretta Scott King author honor book that I’m not quick to recommend. The intended audience is African American teenage boys and perhaps even tweens. There are a couple instances of foul language. There is mention of drug, mental and physical abuse. There is an attempted suicide by a peripheral character. And there are fights – several fights. But the book offers hope and help to those who would wish to escape the downward spiral that crime often begins.
Our protagonist is Maurice (Reese) Anderson. He is put into Progress Center, where nothing seems to progress, to serve time for stealing prescription pads from a doctor’s office and then selling them to a known drug dealer. He needed the money – most likely for a need and not a want. He must serve 30 months.
Because Reese has a high I.Q. and because Reese didn’t commit a violent crime and because his time served has been relatively uneventful, he has been chosen to serve in a work release-program. Ten days a month, Reese is handcuffed by an officer and driven to Evergreen, an assisted-living facility for senior citizens, where he is released to Father Santora. Reese picks up garbage, cleans rooms and helps with one resident, Mr. Hooft.
Mr. Hooft is an immigrant to America from the Netherlands. As a boy, his family moved to Indonesia for his father’s job. And then World War II broke out and they were caught in the middle. Mr. Hooft lived in a concentration camp run by the Japanese and survived. Even though Mr. Hooft is a grumpy old man who refuses to trust Reese because he might be a murderer, they do share something in common. They are both survivors.
Reese is very close to fulfilling his sentence. If he can just make it through another four months without incident, he will have his freedom again. Unfortunately, all it takes is one fight and you can end up in detention or worse. You might be moved from Level 1 to Level 3 or 4. They next thing you know, you are no longer on the road to freedom; you are in the bus headed to the prison for adults. It is no longer your freedom at stake – it is your life.
Reese is not a bad kid. If anything, he is too caring. He doesn’t want to see the underdog get hurt. He easily identifies the kind of kids that get picked on and he has a hard time not stepping in to protect them. This is the reason why he ends up in many fights – he’s protecting the little guy. But “The Man” doesn’t care who is in the right.
Incredibly, I found myself commiserating with Reese. “Tired. Tired and sad. It was better to get mad at somebody and fight than just to feel so tired and sad all the time. The idea came to me, came like I should have known it all the time, that tired and sad was how I always felt. I knew I had to get to someplace else, someplace where I wasn’t tired and I wasn’t beat down and sad.”
Yep, that’s me too!
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