This book feels well intentioned. Its engaging in the narrative about deconstructing racism and the roles that different people play. It's trying to encourage white people to think critically and consider their responsibility both to act and more importantly to listen. To remember that we should be involved but not the center, that our job is to listen support and elevate. But this book doesn't fully get there. It puts too much emphasis on the cost to the white characters, makes our protagonist the victim and focuses more on his suffering than on the struggle at large.

Anyone who has ever been around high school sports knows how heated emotions can be. The same goes for ancestral practices and history. Combine the two and it’s a powder keg of emotion, such as what the author describes all too realistically in this story.

Calls for a Civil War statue removal fall out to a high school football game, leaving one black teen dead. Two high school football players grapple with how to handle this tragedy. The author realistically plots events as would happen in the lives of high school seniors, from their actions and motivations to their thoughts and feelings.

I’ve never read this author, but I was impressed.