A Good Long Way

"At 2 a.m., Roelito wakes up to a furious quarrel between his older brother, Beto, 18, and Dad over a broken curfew. When Dad tells Beto to leave, he does, and his best friend, Jessy, helps him find shelter for the night. She knows about running away; she flees the house whenever her drunken father and her mother scream and fight. Can she wait out the two months to graduation and make it to college? Told in the spare, shifting viewpoints of Roelito, Beto, and Jessy, this short novel, set in a Texas border town and peppered with Spanish phrases, is an absorbing narrative of anger, guilt, sorrow, and hope." — Booklist