Promise Boys

The Urban Promise Preparatory School promises to turn boys into men, to help the city’s young people avoid society’s cracks. They promise to transform roughneck boys from being “at-risk” to upstanding and successful young men. J.B., Ramón, and Trey have inherited the "program's" routine muscle memory: shirts tucked, yes sirs and no ma’ams, no rough- housing, no missing curfew, rigorous test prep, and more. This is what it takes to be college bound, to avoid the fates of the men in their neighborhoods. Or so they’ve been told. But when their principal ends up dead and the cops come sniffing around, the trio comes face-to face with a slew of rotten secrets about their school. And they soon become the case's prime suspects. With no one to help them, they must find out what really happened in order to avoid arrest. An exquisitely taut mystery combined with social commentary about the way American society too often fails boys of color, Promise Boys is a Black and Latinx A Separate Peace meets One of Us Is Lying.