"You could say trouble has an unholy crush on Isaac West," says Isaac West, 16-year-old protagonist of The Free. Isaac lives outside Boston with his alcoholic prostitute mother and adored 13-year-old sister, Janelle. When his vocational high school automotive teacher convinces him to takes the rap for a car theft gone wrong, Isaac is sent to "juvie"--Haverland Juvenile Detention--for 30 days. Determined to keep invisible among the warring gangs until he's "back in the free," Isaac looks for a way to fit in. But "all the inmates have figured out how to sort themselves by color," which complicates things for the biracial teen: "There's never a separate table for mixed-race kids or for kids who just want to be left the hell alone." But when Isaac starts working on Haverland's newspaper as "Poems and S**t Editor" and reluctantly attending required group therapy sessions, he may have found his place. What he learns about himself and his deeply forgotten--or denied--past as he and his therapy teammates re-enact his "crime story" has the potential either to destroy him or turn his life around.
In Lauren McLaughlin's (Scored; Cycler) brilliant, authentic telling, it's easy to understand how Isaac ended up going down his particular path of petty crime: "I'm buying something better. Freedom. Not for myself either, but for Janelle. My own freedom will come later, after Janelle's squared away." Readers will have tremendous empathy for a boy who will do anything to protect his sister, especially when he starts to wonder if there's a different route he can take to "the free." --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor