In this honest novel set in the racial tinderbox of Chicago in 1969, thirteen-year-old Simon Fleming, the white son of a civil rights activist minister, is sent to a predominately African American high school, feeling charged by his parents to carry out the family's commitment to the community and school integration. Here, he is dropped into a world where gang warfare, drug abuse, and violence are rampant. Simon's quest for survival takes him through a failed student boycott organised by community leaders, as well as through numerous race riots, and brings him into contact with gangbangers, political activists, racist cops, and unlikely new friends. The book exposes an out-of-touch education system and the universality of racial violence amid a nation moving, inch by hard-fought inch, toward a more culturally diverse and inclusive future.