Dub Wiggins faces a dilemma: The military boarding school where he studied for four years, and has taught for more than twenty, wants him gone – unless he toes the line for the autocratic headmaster who has ruled the institution for decades.
But Dub is a contrarian. Conforming to clichéd norms makes him physically ill, so he devises a plan. He will play the good sheep, but only long enough to retaliate against the school with a scandalous memoir of the physical, mental, and sexual predation he suffered as a student – capped off with the real story of a murder committed by one of his classmates – if only he can remember exactly how it happened.
When Dub was a student, brutality and betrayal derailed his first coming of age. But in his quest to bury the school in scandal, he finds a chance for redemption: He can either honor a solemn debt of friendship, or bring a murderer to justice.
He cannot do both, yet his reclamation hangs in the balance.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Prologue • ix
1 ~ It’s a Big Hill • 1
2 ~ The Shepherd in the Pasture • 18
3 ~ The Plan • 28
4 ~ The Plot Thickens • 41
5 ~ Louella Delany • 54
6 ~ Journal: Freshmen, Part One • 66
7 ~ Family for Dinner • 82
8 ~ Journal: Freshmen, Part Two • 91
9 ~ A Meeting and a Proposal • 112
10 ~ Journal: Freshmen, Part Three • 127
11 ~ The Winter of Our Content • 146
12 ~ Journal: Sophomores, Part One • 160
13 ~ Debating Sex and War • 179
14 ~ Journal: Sophomores, Part Two • 202
15 ~ The Ides of March • 214
16 ~ Journal: Sophomores, Part Three • 231
17 ~ Goose and Gander • 241
18 ~ Journal: Sophomores, Part Four • 250
19 ~ The Reckoning • 269
20 ~ Journal: Juniors • 286
21 ~ Finally, I Get to Go Home • 303
Acknowledgments • 323
About the Author • 325
Über den Autor
Michael Clark has been a military school cadet, a musician, a motorcycle journalist, a janitor, and a Human Resources executive (which is akin to janitorial work, but more lucrative). Today he is what he has always wanted to be: a creative artist in multiple genres, with enough money to buy health insurance.