Girls Like Her
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A raw, gripping, authentic, and boldly original novel about a fifteen-year-old Texas girl set to stand trial for murder—and the one person who might be able to help her clear her name.
A wealthy businessman is dead, and fifteen-year-old Ruby Monroe is in a Dallas jail awaiting trial for his murder. Ruby has no one she can count on—no one, except her state-appointed caseworker, a woman named Cadence Ware. In Ruby’s experience, that’s not anyone she can trust.
Cadence is familiar with the cold reality of Ruby’s situation, even before Ruby was arrested. Angry and alone, homeless and hungry, breaking the law just to survive, she is the kind of girl no one wants to listen to, especially not the prosecutor who wants to put her away for life.
But no one knows the story—the real story—of what happened the day Ruby met the man who would end up dead. As the layers of truth are peeled away and time is running out, Ruby and Cadence will both have desperate choices to make—choices that could mean the difference between Ruby spending her life in prison or her name being cleared.
Told through a collection of letters, meeting notes, news articles, court transcripts, and more, Girls Like Her is a riveting and unflinching tale of the truths so often lost in the American justice system, and one girl’s fight to be heard.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Accused of murdering a wealthy businessman and slated to be prosecuted as an adult, white 15-year-old Ruby Monroe faces a potential death sentence while awaiting trial in a Dallas prison where she is "just another wild thing in a cage." Only Ruby knows the truth about the purported homicide—but that truth is buried under memories of abuse, exploitation, houselessness, and neglect. While preparing for trial and reflecting upon a quarrel with an estranged friend, Ruby confides in Cadence Ware, a white social worker whose personal history of trauma enables her to see beyond Ruby's "difficult" veneer. As Ruby gains insight into how past experiences shape impulses and decisions, she and Dr. Ware make morally gray choices that could determine the trial's outcome. Sumrow (The Inside Battle) crafts suspense through a compelling, patchwork narrative that combines fictional press releases, letters, notes, legal memos, and close third-person prose. Skilled pacing transforms a typical ripped-from-the-headlines premise into a nail-biting investigation of financial precarity and child sex trafficking informed by Sumrow's work as a lawyer, as disclosed in an author's note. Ages 14–up.
