Excerpt:
An hour later Ray and Helen sat alone on the house's west side sundeck, facing the blue mountains bathed in evening mist. The quiet of the moment--their favorite time of day--failed to calm Helen. Concealing a nagging feeling of dismay, she murmured, "Kenny's telling the truth. He had nothing to do with whatever went on in the bus. We both know that."
A furtive smirk appeared on Ray's face. His pretended interest in the evening newspaper was a smoke screen for his increasing anxiety about the boy.
To her dying day, Helen would refuse to consider the possibility of her son's wrongdoings. She felt the same about every member of the Letmorse family. Law abiding citizens, all of them. Period.
Ray no longer tried to point out her obvious biases. It was a bone of contention between them. And in any marriage some things are better left unsaid. Helen would swear she was not prejudiced, "Everybody knows that, unlike the rest of us, minorities are criminal in nature." She was frightened of them and she despised them. More so those of Jessipurn whom she was forced to encounter in the local shops oftener than in previous years.
With one exception: dear Old Nellie, who was far too good to her brood of nameless grandchildren.

Synopsis
Soft Cover
This book is a remarkable accomplishment--on one hand it is a riveting story with achingly real characters. On the other it is a light illuminating the hidden darkness in our classrooms and forcing us to see that drug use is a widespread blight on this country's educational system. Naive parents must wake up. Jaded educators must take courage. Only united can we prevail against a problem that does not discriminate by race, religion or family tree.
The teens in this book are pitiful but the pity the author creates is more the life they lead than the people themselves.
It's not their fault, according to the writer, but the fault of the environment and people who were suppose to be in charge.