Struggling with a Secret

Excerpt

In Matt's neighborhood the new green leaves were just unfurling on the trees. They made Grove Street, as he walked along it, seem leafy and sheltering. The cars whizzed by too fast, rushing out of town. The houses out here were all nice, the lawns manicured, then you came to the country club, with its deep-green golf course undulating along the left side of the road. Matt, walking away from town, pulled on his headphones and pulled up his hood. He selected a song and turned up the sound. Against a big beat, Tupac Shakur started saying it was just him against the world.

Matt loved a certain type of deep-city hip-hop, a certain type of song. He had pulled the stuff he liked off audio sites and CDs till his player was a solid little cabinet of the ones that fit him, that spoke to him. The iPod was his one and only companion. He trusted it like a friend. It held his music.

Out here it was raining very softly now, like a mist in the air. The bright and delicate new green of spring was everywhere, freshly growing on the trees and the lawns, sometimes mingled with the dark green of pine trees. Matt did notice the new green, and he knew it wouldn't last. Nothing lasted. As he came past the golf course, the rain started thickening. A few players hurried off the course into the clubhouse in white carts, and in the parking lot a few others were stowing clubs in the trunks of their nice cars. Out on the road, Matt walked by the golf people unseen, as if he and they were creatures in a divided universe. He kept on walking.

In Falling, veteran young-adult writer Doug Wilhelm '74 depicts teenage turmoil with authenticity and sensitivity

At school, ninth-grader Matt Shaw seems like a regular kid. He's a solid student, comes from a middle-class family, and lives in a good neighborhood in an all-American small town.

But behind the accent of normalcy, Matt's family life is falling apart. His older brother, who still lives at home, has begun using drugs, and Matt is afraid to tell anyone because he doesn't want his brother to go to jail. His parents, well-meaning but distracted, haven't caught on yet. And Matt, struggling with the implications of his secret, has become withdrawn, giving up his spot on the basketball team and pulling away from his best friend, KJ.

He wonders what life is all about, or even if it's worth figuring out--until he meets Katie, a sparkling fifteen-year-old classmate who loves to ask questions.

Falling, Doug Wilhelm's eleventh novel for young adults, takes on two tough subjects: falling in love and falling out of innocence. It's not new territory for Wilhelm, whose 2003 young adult novel The Revealers told the story of three seventh graders who are beleaguered by bullies and decide to confront their tormenters and the culture that fosters bullying behavior.

The Revealers was based on Wilhelm's research and his own experiences as an adolescent, and it touched a nerve across the country. Hundreds of schools, libraries, and communities have used the book as a platform for exploring the problem of bullying and how kids can deal with it, and Wilhelm has visited schools to talk with discussion and support groups.

Falling (published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2007) promises to have a similar impact. With authentic main characters and a plot as taut as a mystery novel, it depicts teenage turmoil with honesty and sensitivity. Matt's journey from disaffection to confrontation takes him through some pretty rough patches, but in the end, he discovers that there are some people you can trust. It's a lesson that will resonate with kids from all backgrounds.

--Traci Vogel

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