Trell
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
On a hot summer night in the late 1980s, in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, a fourteen-year-old African-American girl was sitting on a mailbox talking with her friends when she became the innocent victim of gang-related gunfire. Amid public outcry, an immediate manhunt was on to catch the murderer, and a young African-American man was quickly apprehended, charged, and — wrongly — convicted of the crime. Dick Lehr, a former reporter for the Boston Globe’s famous Spotlight Team who worked on this story three decades ago, brings the case to light once more with Trell, a page-turning novel about the daughter of the imprisoned man, who persuades a reporter and a lawyer to help her prove her father’s innocence. What pieces of evidence might have been overlooked? Can they manage to get to the truth before a dangerous character from the neighborhood gets to them?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In precise, economical prose, former reporter Lehr (Black Mass) recounts a suspenseful story inspired by a case he investigated in the 1980s. Fourteen-year-old Trell Taylor was just a baby when her father, Romero, was wrongly convicted of murdering a 13-year-old girl. Since then, things have been difficult for Trell and her mother, but two important adults Nora, a rookie attorney, and Clemens, a seasoned reporter for the Boston Globe believe that there's a chance for Romero's release if they can gather evidence that his trial was unfair. Trell is determined to help, but finding proof of her father's innocence isn't easy when witnesses have disappeared over the years or are reluctant to speak out. Set in Boston's Roxbury district, the novel traces Trell's quest to find information, an arduous and dangerous search that uncovers some harsh truths about her father's criminal past and some disturbing facts about gang lords and police corruption. Without sugarcoating city violence, Lehr presents facts about the case in terms readers will understand while providing enough exciting discoveries and triumphs to offset Trell's disappointments. Ages 12 up.
