1. What’s this book about?
Sixteen-year-old Alex has just begun his junior year at a boy’s boarding school when he fails to save a friend from drowning in a river on campus. Fearing the consequences if they reveal the whole trule of what happened, Alex and Glenn, who was also at the river that day, decide to lie. Plagued by guilt, Alex takes refuge in the library, telling his tale in a journal he hides behind a copy of Moby-Dick.
But the boys were not the only ones by the river. In the midst of their panic, Miss Dovecott, the young English teacher fresh out of Princeton, happens to arrive. Over the next few weeks, Miss Dovecott begins to recognize poetic talent in Alex; She helps him find his voice, and Alex is thrilled by his teacher’s special attention. But when it becomes obvious that Miss Dovecott had been noticing glimmers of guilt in Alex’s writing, Glenn becomes convinced that she is out to get them. Now Alex must choose between his friend and his mentor. But every decision has it’s consequences.

2. Why is a good choice… Modern twist on a book set in the 80’s
Alex addresses the reader, much like fb
Alex hides behind a journal, much like fb today
Fans of the book or those interested can get involved
with this interactive page

8. I carry a backpack full of things I’m not supposed to have, a pack of cigarettes and a tattered Playboy magazine - adult things that speak of the burden of adolescence and of the line we have to walk between childhood and adulthood. Parents and teachers expect us to be both. Besides my backpack, I carry a fishing pole. So do my friends Thomas and Glenn because that’s why we’re headed to the river., to swim and maybe catch some bass. I don’t know why, though because we always throw them back.
What I carry are simple things that you could find on any Birch School boy at any given time. I think about the things that I could have carried to the river instead, my Latin reader, for example, but I come here to escape school. Or I could have brought a sweatshirt, but cold water on skin, like the cigarettes, makes me feel real again. The students here think that they are missing out on the exciting lives that their friends back home are living. People in our hometowns thing we were sent off to boarding school because we are discipline problems or drug addicts or just bad kids with bad genes. “What else could their parents do with them?” they probably say to each other.
That is not how my parents felt about sending me here. They wanted to give me brothers; they wanted to give me the opportunity to try things I wouldn’t have tried at home. What I carry, too, is the burden of proof that they were, in fact, right. That I am coming to know who I am. I now run cross-country, I have more endurance and drive than I knew that I had, and I also have friends, good friends. But one of these good friends is dead, and so I carry his life, and his death, inside me too. I was close to him when he lived, and I was close to him when he died. I don’t think my mom or dad every expected this kind of closeness.
What I carry in my backpack down to the river, I carry not knowing that in less than an hour Thomas Broughton will be dead. That is not a knowledge I carry yet, but I will carry it soon - the knowledge of my darkest self - and I will carry it forever. (Page 9)