Current novel
Some People’s Kids
Nine months. Three strikes. One chance to decide who he becomes.
Strummer expects to wait out probation at Hope House and leave. But a halfway house built on rules, broken trust, and fragile friendships forces him to choose between compliance and real connection.
Story overview
Strummer gets dropped at Hope House and left there. No goodbye. No plan. It's not juvie. It's not prison. It's a halfway house for troubled teens with rules, routine, and a clock that doesn't care how you feel about it.
He tells himself he'll keep his head down. Do the program. Get out at eighteen.
Then Hope House does what places like that do. It gets under your skin. The kids aren't a group. They're a mess of stories. The staff isn't a safety net. It's a system. And the longer Strummer's there, the harder it is to pretend none of it matters.
Strummer is close to freedom. Close enough to taste it. Now he has to decide what kind of person walks out.
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Content notes
A few things to know before chapter one.
The opening pages deal with difficult material. If you want a clearer sense of what the excerpt touches, the notes below will help.
This excerpt contains references to family abandonment, addiction recovery, and past trauma.