The Last Kid Left

When a scandalous small-town crime goes viral, a teen girl takes center stage in the story of a twenty-first-century Puritan witch hunt. The Last Kid Left begins when a car smashes into a sculpture of a giant cowgirl. The police find two bodies in the trunk. Nineteen-year-old Nick Toussaint Jr. is arrested for murder, and after details of the crime rip across the Internet, his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Emily Portisa sheltered teen whos been off the grid until now, her first romance coinciding with her first cell phoneis nearly consumed by a public hungry for every lurid detail, accurate or not. Emily and Nick are not the only ones whose lives come unmoored. A retired police officer latches on to the case. Nicks alcoholic mother is thrust into an unfamiliar role. A young journalist who left her hometown behind is pulled into the fray. And Emilys father, the town sheriff, is finally forced to confront a monstrous secret. The Last Kid Left is a bold, searching novel about how our relationships operate in a hyper-connected world, an expertly portrayed account of tragedy turned mercilessly into entertainment. And its the suspenseful unwinding of a crime thats more complex than it initially seems. But mostly its the story of two teenagers, dismantled by circumstances and rotten luck, who are desperate to believe that love is enough to save them.