This is a beautifully written coming of age story set in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The narrator tells the story in a series of flashbacks to his teen years with his adult perspective weighing in on things at various times. As the story begins, the narrator is 14 and Lindy, a 15 year old girl who he has a crush on, has been raped. We see through his eyes, the effect of that violence and loss of innocence on not only Lindy, but on her family and on the people in the neighborhood and on him. Over the years, he tries to figure out who the rapist was. We are introduced to the various suspects, including the narrator himself. I love the vivid descriptions of Louisiana and the narrator's perspective as he looks back in time and understands events differently from an adult perspective. At one point he says "But for every adult person you look up to in life, there is trailing behind them an invisible chain gang of ghosts, all of which, as a child, you are generously spared from meeting." I look forward to reading future novels by this author.
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