To my amazing agent, Kerry Sparks, who can walk and talk on the phone like no one I have ever met in my life – a million thanks. You and everyone else at Levine Greenberg Rostan always make me feel so cared for.
Thank you to those good folks who help me on the business side of things, including Nancy Tellez, Dave Roach, Andy Smith, and Belinda Rey.
Many thanks to Jeff Zentner and L. Scott Sherman for their help in answering several questions about the legal process and criminal justice system in Texas in the early 1960s.
To my friends at Blue Willow Bookshop, I adore you. To my book community, both here in Houston and all over the world, I appreciate you. We may write and read in solitude, but we survive publishing via frantic phone calls and texts. You know who you are.
To my first family in Virginia and California, thank you! To my second family at Bellaire High School, thank you! I am Cardinal Proud.
This book was written to the music of several artists past and present, but most regularly to the sounds of Elyse Weinberg (thank you, Mike Higgins) and Alvvays (thank you, Jeff Waller – and thanks also for the maps!).
Last but never least, a million thanks to the man who has been making me laugh for twenty years, the ‘ruler of my heart’, my husband, Kevin. I needed the laughs for this one especially, and you never failed to provide. Texas-sized love to you and Elliott forever.
HODDER CHILDREN’S BOOKS
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Hodder and Stoughton
First published in the USA in 2021 by Roaring Brook Press
This eBook edition published in 2021
Text copyright © Jennifer Mathieu, 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eBook conversion by PDQ Digital Media Solutions Ltd.
ISBN 978 1 444 96490 5
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