Best friends Ray and Jose are not your typical thirteen-year-olds. They’ve escaped foster care and juvenile detention centers to live on their own together in an abandoned building located near Manhattan Park called Ten-Mile River. With no use for school or families, street-smart Jose and bookish, introspective Ray have everything they need in each other. They are closer than brothers until they meet Trini. She’s smart, beautiful, and confident, and they both fall for her immediately. As tension creeps into their relationship, Ray must struggle to find an identity separate from Jose and try to envision a future for himself beyond Jose and Ten-Mile River.

This is Paul Griffin’s first novel, and his spare moving prose and uncanny ear for authentic dialogue is guaranteed to garner many fans.