No Going Back

February 5, 2024
On a Friday, 17-year-old Antonio
Echeverria Sullivan secures an early release from a Washington state youth detention center for a crime that his father implicated him in. His parole officer schedules a meeting with Antonio on Monday to go over parole terms, but as the weekend progresses, external forces work against him and test his resolve to stay on the straight and narrow. Seeking to make amends with his Uruguayan mother and childhood best friend Maya, Antonio yearns to obtain redemption and absolution, and to start over. Past associates jeopardize his freedom and refuse to leave him alone until he divulges the
location of an item that he hid before his arrest, and all the while Antonio contends with his mother’s serious illness, which CPS cited as the reason they put him in his abusive and manipulative father’s
custody in the first place. Poetic flashbacks by Flores-Scott (American Road Trip) detail Antonio’s downward spiral while also presenting his reflections about the world around him, and time-stamped chapters add urgency, intensity, and excitement as the thrilling plot progresses, making for a page-turning story about forgiveness and personal evolution. Ages 14–up. Agent: Steven Chudney, Chudney Agency.

February 1, 2024
Antonio Echeverr�a Sullivan is just out of juvie, and he really does want to follow all the rules--but will his past let him? Antonio wants to tell you his story, and he hopes you'll believe him. He's a white and Uruguayan teen boy who's spent the last year and a half at the Zephyr Woods Youth Detention Center in Washington state's Puget Sound area, taking the fall for a crime he wasn't primarily responsible for. The conditions of his early release are clear, among them checking in with his parole officer, avoiding all contact with his father, staying sober, attending high school, and following a curfew. Desperate to make amends with his mother and his best friend, Maya, Antonio immediately sets off on a 72-hour journey, trying to outrun his past--and breaking all the rules, which might land him back at the detention center and permanently ruin all the relationships he's trying to save. This is a taut coming-of-age story told in a combination of prose, with chapter headers that mark the day and time, and poems that flash back to earlier events. Antonio's journey of self-realization features powerful inner dialogue that allows readers to understand the impulses that lead to his poor choices, and the novel brutally reflects the consequences and trials of addiction, chronic illness, and domestic violence on a family. The excellent pacing and heart-wrenching exploration of redemption will sweep readers up. (author's note) (Fiction. 14-18)

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February 15, 2024
Grades 9-12 After 18 months, Antonio is being paroled from Zephyr Woods Youth Detention Center, where he has been incarcerated for planning a robbery with his erstwhile friends, Gary Jr. and Vaughn. Once released, he is desperate to see his best friend, Maya, and when he breaks parole to find her, he learns that, like him, she is in recovery for alcoholism. When she rebuffs him, Antonio breaks parole again to see Gary Jr., who now wants to dig up unrecovered money from the robbery. Thinking of all the good he can do with the cash, Antonio agrees but has a secret plan of his own. Told in Antonio's first-person voice, the chapters alternate between loose free verse and prose, the former providing the rough-edged, gritty backstory. Antonio is a sympathetic character who makes bad decisions, and trouble seems to stick to him. Readers will forgive the plot its inconsistencies and implausibilities (and there are some) for the sake of the page-turning, highly readable story.

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