The Free

About this book

A 21st century response to Walter Dean Myerss classic Lockdown The Free takes a look inside juvie where Isaac West is fighting for a second chance. In the beginning Isaac West stole to give his younger sister Janelle little things: a new sweater a scarf just things that made her look less like a charity case whose mother spent money on booze and more like the prep school girls hes seen on the way to school. But when his biggest job to date a car theft goes wrong Isaac chooses to take the full rap himself and hes cut off from helping Janelle. He steels himself for 30 days at Haverland Juvenile Detention Facility. Friendless in a dangerous world of gangs and violent offenders he must watch his every step. Isaacs sentence includes group therapy where he and fellow inmates reenact their crimes attempting to understand what happened from the perspective of their victims. The sessions are intense. And as Isaac pieces together the truth about the circumstances that shaped his lifethe circumstances that landed him in juvie in the first placehe must face who he was who he is . . . and who he wants to be.