Published in 2019
288 pages
Sarah Hopkins is a criminal lawyer, the wife of Matt Moran and the mother of two young children. She is the author of two novels, The Crimes of Billy Fish, which was highly commended in the inaugural ABC Fiction Awards, and Speak to Me.
What is this book about?
As we got closer I could see behind the sandstone a curved concrete building: a purpose-built structure. But still no fence, no wire. Not a bar in sight. For this, I’d been told that morning, I should be grateful. This was a ‘lifeline…a last chance’. That is what the judge said.
Daniel is a sixteen-year-old drug dealer and he’s going to jail.
Then, suddenly, he’s not.
A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other ‘gifted delinquents’: the elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter.
So where are they? It’s not a school, despite the ‘lessons’ with the headsets and changing images. It’s not a psych unit—not if the absence of medication means anything. It’s not a jail, because Daniel’s free to leave. Or that’s what they tell him.
He knows he and the others are part of an experiment.
But he doesn’t know who’s running it or what they’re trying to prove. And he has no idea what they’re doing to him.
