< BR> Sixteen-year-old Jayson Porter wants to believe things will get better. But the harsh realities of his life never seem to change. Living in the inland-Florida projects with his abusive mother, he tries unsuccessfully to fit in at his predominately white school, while struggling to maintain even a thread of a relationship with his drug-addicted father. As the pressure mounts, there??'s only one thing Jayson feels he has control over???the choice of whether to live or die.< BR> < BR> In this powerful, gripping& novel, Coretta Scott King Award???winning author Jaime Adoff explores the harsh reality of a teenager??'s life, giving hope even in the bleakest of hours.< BR> Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Gr 9 Up-Jayson Porter, 16, spends his days as a struggling scholarship student at a prep school in a wealthy Florida suburb, and the rest of his time at home in the projects avoiding his abusive white alcoholic mother, checking in on his wasted-on-crack black father, and smoking dope with his friend Trax. Jayson knows how to survive in "the hood," but the mounting pressures of his mother's beatings, his challenges at school, and his menial job build until he sees suicide as his only escape. The idea of jumping from the 18th-floor breezeway outside his apartment door entices him. Trax is killed in a meth-lab explosion, and then Jayson's father lets slip that he and Lizzie aren't really his parents, but stole him from their friend Trina when all were drug addicts living together. It's the last straw, and Jayson jumps, but only from the seventh floor. He survives but with a broken neck, narrowly missing serious paralysis, and facing months of surgery, therapy, and rehabilitation. Jayson's first-person narration throbs with the pain of his life, revealing the frightened teen behind the cocky exterior. Adoff writes candidly, with carefully chosen details carrying a wealth of insight, in a style approaching free verse that draws out the complexities of Jayson's character as he deals with sexuality, self-esteem, and identity. The ending is a bit too tidy, but Jayson is a vivid, dynamic character who will get under readers' skin.-Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

*Starred Review* Jayson Porter's life is miserable. His relationship with his alcoholic mother wavers between abuse and neglect, his father is a downwardly spiraling crack addict, and he literally has to dodge bullets in the projects just to stay alive long enough to escape in the only way he sees possible. He daydreams about throwing himself off his building, and when he finally does, he has a split-second realization on the way to oblivion that no matter how grim, life is too precious to abandon hope. Miraculously, he is given a second chance at life. Adoff, whose verse-novel Jimi & Me won a 2006 Coretta Scott King Award, captures the inner-city voice of drug-strangled poverty from Jayson's point of view, in stark prose that crumbles into haunting blank verse, effectively using both white and black space to convey Jayson's anguished mentality as he crawls ever closer to the edge. This forceful story will appeal to the many readers, some in despair, who will find Jayson a character they can cling to. It's a hard book to read, and even harder to put down.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2008 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.