The darker side of a friendship is portrayed by Jess, a
seventeen-year-old who struggles to find the moral courage to remain
loyal to her best friend Casey who has been accused of murdering an
eight year old girl at summer camp. The town becomes a media circus and
the pressure's far too great for Jess to cope.
A person doesn't have to do anything important to get recognition
anymore; it's enough to know someone who does. Parasitic fame. Casey was
more than just a dependable camp counselor dedicated to her little
buddies in Cabin Three. She was a brilliant student looking forward to a
scholarship and a future career in entomology. Casey wasn't the kind of
girl who would be stuck in a town like Galloway the rest of her life.
She was really going places. And nobody knew this better than Jess,
Casey's best friend.
So how could a girl like Casey be arrested for the murder of a young
camper under her care... Jess believes her friend is innocent and that
the real killer will be caught; but in the meantime, she finds herself
the reluctant center of attention. After all, she was also a counselor
in Cabin Three. Jess must know something...right? Readers will readily
sympathize with Jess, whose life begins to spin out of control.
But award-winning author Deborah Ellis brings much more to the
character of her complex and troubled narrator, who may not be entirely
reliable. As the events surrounding the final weeks of August are slowly
unveiled, readers will begin to question the very nature of friendship
and how one finds the moral courage to be loyal, no matter what the
consequences.
