When We Was Fierce

Fifteen-year-old Theo isn't looking for trouble, but when he and his friends witness a brutal attack on Ricky-Ricky, an innocent boy who doesn't know better than to walk right up to the most vicious gang leader around, Theo's in trouble for real. And in this neighborhood, everything is at stake. In a poignant, unflinching novel of survival told largely in street dialect, e.E. Charlton-Trujillo enters the lives of teenagers coming of age in the face of spiraling violence among gangs, by police, and at home.