How It Went Down

This is a really great teen novel, told from multiple perspectives, about the shooting of a young black man by a white man and the aftermath for the community where the shooting took place. On the face of it, it's a simple story told through the experiences of the people affected by the shooting. The author does a beautiful job of showing how the effects of the shooting ripple out from the immediate community to touch people surprisingly far away, and she creates voices for her characters that feel authentic, however likable or unlikable they may be. The result is a deep and painfully human story that doesn't offer any easy answers for the problems it depicts, but offers hope in the resilience of some of its characters.

This book was chosen for the Saint Paul Public Library's 2015 Read Brave program, a community reading/teen reading program. The Luther Seminary Book Club read and discussed it in January, and some of the participants expressed interest in attending author events in February.