Young Adult Books

Swimming Sideways

What do you do when your world has fallen apart, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to put it back together?

Abby Kaiāulu (Kaw ee aw oo loo) gets the chance to start over when her family relocates from Hawaii to a small town on the Oregon coast.

But she’s hiding a secret. 

Leaving the past and the cultural lessons of her Hawaiian grandfather behind, Abby redefines who she is to hide it. There’s Good Abby - she makes and follows the rules - and there’s Bad Abby - she always questions them. But both leave Abby wondering: which one is she really? 

Her road of self-discovery takes her on a journey where she must discover the truth of who she is as a daughter, a sister, a woman, a Hawaiian and as a friend. 

But just when she thinks her world might be coming back together, it falls apart all over again.

The Ugly Truth

If faced with perpetuating the perfect lie or confessing the ugly truth, which would you choose?

Seth Peters has been angry for a long time. Living with an abusive, alcoholic father has that effect. When he wakes up in a hospital - outside of his body - due to an accident that he doesn’t remember, Seth is no longer angry, he’s terrified.

As his memories begin to return, he is confronted with a legacy of lies he’s constructed to survive the pain of his own life. Realizing he’s no different than the man he’s loathed his whole life, Seth learns that his choices have set into motion far-reaching and terrible consequences.

Challenged with wallowing in the pain or confronting his fears and admitting to the ugly truth about himself, Seth must decide if facing what he fears most to save his friend’s life is worth the risk of losing his own. 

The Bones of Who We Are

Gabe Daniels always figured his DNA is flawed. One only has to look to his past to see it, and it's why he’s tried to hide it in new layers of his life: his new home, his adoptive parents, Seth, Abby. But darkness is always at his heels. With the impending death of his former best friend - a death for which he feels responsible -  the depression, the broken relationships, the day-to-day struggle, and the monster trying to break out of him have left a debris field in his wake. Gabe decides the broken past that made him was always going to lead him down the road of no return. It is in his DNA, after all, in the biological parents who made him.