As seventh grader T'shawn works up the nerve to ask his widowed mother for money to join a diving team, his estranged older brother, Lamont, is released from prison and moves home. Tension rises as both brothers struggle to adjust. This first-person account of life on Chicago's South Side covers topics including cancer, homelessness, sickle cell disease, and domestic violence. None of the issues reaches a neat resolution, resulting in a thought-provoking novel.

The tense relationship between two brothers drives this middle grade debut set on Chicago-s South Side, as narrator T-Shawn turns 13, joins a diving team, and deals with the return of his older brother, Lamont, from prison. Raised by his mother after his father-s death from cancer (an illness that left crushing medical debt and caused the family a brief stint in a shelter), T-Shawn realizes that he wants to dive. A windfall scholarship allows him to participate in the sport, despite the notion that African-Americans -don-t do water sports.- Though the sports thread and familiar middle school issues, such as crushes, loom large, friction in T-Shawn-s home anchors the story: he cannot forget the violence and betrayals of Lamont-s former gang days and regards him as -the biggest villain I know.- Binns amplifies T-Shawn-s distrust with the neighborhood-s concerns, and conflict heightens after T-Shawn gets swept up in a petition to send Lamont away. While forced dialogue marks some of the coverage of weighty issues, this novel successfully