Hope Long is a seventeen-year-old whose life revolves around her eighteen-year-old brother who is autistic. Having an abusive and alcoholic mother, living in a rundown house and really no social life to speak of Hope is already battling many things when her brother Jeremy is accused of murdering the baseball coach who is also a favorite basketball coach at the high school.
Hope knows that Jeremy did not commit this murder but the evidence is stacked against him. Her mother and the lawyer tell her that his best defense is to have him portrayed as mentally incompetent. That may keep him out of prison but it won’t keep him out of a mental institution. Hope can’t do this because she knows her brother better than anyone else.
Hope sets off on her own investigation to prove Jeremy’s innocence with the help of her long time friend T.J. and her new friend and crush Chase who also happens to be the son of the local sheriff.
Faced with a stalker who doesn’t want her to investigate any further, trouble in her friendship with T.J., and learning something about her mother she was never meant to know she still pushes forward with her investigation because Jeremy is her whole life.
As she comes to the end of her investigation she finds herself terrified to really find out the truth. Can she really tell the court everything she knows?
Recommended by: Joleen Waltman, Librarian, Idaho USA
(Editor's note: additional keywords are trials, mutism, selective mutism)
