Other Side of the Tracks
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
This “stirring…emotionally raw” (Publishers Weekly) young adult debut novel about three teens entangled by secret love, open hatred, and the invisible societal constraints wrapped around people both Black and white is perfect for readers of All American Boys and The Hate U Give.
There is an unspoken agreement between the racially divided towns of Bayside and Hamilton: no one steps over the train tracks that divide them. Or else.
Not until Zach Whitman anyway, a white boy who moves in from Philly and who dreams of music. When he follows his dream across the tracks to meet his idol, the famous jazz musician who owns The Sunlight Record Shop in Hamilton, he’s flung into Capri Collins’s path.
Capri has big plans: she wants to follow her late mother’s famous footsteps, dancing her way onto Broadway, and leaving this town for good, just like her older brother, Justin, is planning to do when he goes off to college next year. As sparks fly, Zach and Capri realize that they can help each other turn hope into a reality, even if it means crossing the tracks to do it.
But one tragic night changes everything. When Justin’s friend, the star of Hamilton’s football team, is murdered by a white Bayside police officer, the long-standing feud between Bayside and Hamilton becomes an all-out war. And Capri, Justin, and Zach are right in the middle of it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The violent, racist shared history between largely white Bayside and predominantly Black Hamilton—two New York towns separated by train tracks—reverberates into three teens' lives in Alyse's stirring debut. Black siblings Capri and Justin, whose relationship became strained following their mother's death, want to leave Hamilton to pursue their dreams: Capri as a dancer in N.Y.C. and Justin as a college basketball player. White musician Zach, a New Bayside resident and Philly native, is appalled by his neighbors' overt racism toward a Black Bayside resident. While visiting Hamilton, Zach befriends Capri and they support each other in their endeavors; Zach accompanies Capri to a dance school audition, and she helps him secure an opportunity to open for a local jazz legend. Meanwhile, Justin's athletic goals are derailed when he finds out that his longtime girlfriend is pregnant. The shooting of an unarmed Black Hamilton teen by a white Bayside police officer brings the towns' existing tensions to a boiling point, triggering a fallout that imperils the trio's futures. Through the characters' distinct and lingering alternating perspectives, this emotionally raw volume juggles interracial dynamics and themes of appropriation, identity, and systemic racism. Ages 12–up.
