This is a touching novel in verse about what happens when a beloved older brother, Will, suffers a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a football game as seen through the lens of a younger sibling, 12-year-old Trace.
Will's struggles are typical for TBI sufferers, and he battles depression, anger management, personality changes, drug dependency, and more after the injury. His grades tank. College prospects fade into a lost dream. Trace struggles to deal with it all, as do the boys' parents.
It is, unfortunately, the plight of kids who suffer head injuries in high school sports and is still all too common, even with heightened awareness of concussions, their cumulative effects and increased efforts by coaches and physical trainers to screen kids for symptoms. As a parent of a high school athlete in a (ridiculously) physical sport, who suffered a concussion, not the more traumatic TBI, I connected with this story right away. Such potential lost!
As a teacher, I've seen first-hand how TBI's change children, rob them of achieving their dreams and ripple destructively through entire families.
It's a heart-wrenching read, but dare I say a necessary one for both middle and high school athletes and their parents.
