Juvie
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Heart-wrenching and real, Juvie tells the story of two sisters grappling with accountability, sacrifice — and who will be there to help you after you take the fall. Sadie Windas has always been the responsible one — she’s the star player on her AAU basketball team, she gets good grades, she dates a cute soccer player, and she tries to help out at home. Not like her older sister, Carla, who leaves her three-year-old daughter, Lulu, with Aunt Sadie while she parties and gets high. But when both sisters are caught up in a drug deal — wrong place, wrong time — it falls to Sadie to confess to a crime she didn’t commit to keep Carla out of jail and Lulu out of foster care. Sadie is supposed to get off with a slap on the wrist, but somehow, impossibly, gets sentenced to six months in juvie. As life as Sadie knew it disappears beyond the stark bars of her cell, her anger — at her ex-boyfriend, at Carla, and at herself — fills the empty space left behind. Can Sadie forgive Carla for getting her mixed up in this mess? Can Carla straighten herself out to make a better life for Lulu, and for all of them? Can Sadie survive her time in juvie with her spirit intact?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Watkins (What Comes After) offers a frank view of life in a juvenile detention center as he explores the inner strife of an inmate suffering the consequences of a crime she didn't commit. Being at the wrong party at the wrong time leads to a six-month stint in juvie for 17-year-old Sadie Windas while her older sister, who should have gone to jail, gets off scot-free. Simmering with resentment, Sadie worries she may have paid too high a price for her sister's sake. A reflective first-person narrative alternately expresses Sadie's traumas in lockup bullying, brawls, and lies and her past ordeals, including her dismissal from the basketball team, breakup with a boyfriend, and desperate attempts to keep her dysfunctional family glued together. Little by little, a multi-dimensional portrait of Sadie emerges, exposing her vulnerabilities and struggles with the mistakes she's made ("Maybe not being guilty wasn't the same as being innocent," she concludes). Sadie's emotional journey, impacted by her profound discoveries about fellow inmates and her growing friendship with a kindly guard, is absorbing and wrenching. Ages 14 up.
