Maverick “Little Don” Carter, a seventeen-year-old resident of Garden Hollow, has been surrounded by the influence of the Kings gang since childhood. He understands that joining a gang can cost him the people he cares about and his future—just as it happened to his father Adonis, who got forty years in prison.
His cousin Dre tries to keep Mav from going deeper into the world of the gang, while his best friend King believes it’s time for serious things.
Unexpected events in Maverick’s life—fatherhood, the loss of someone close, and his girlfriend’s pregnancy—change how he sees life. Is he ready to break the bond with the Kings, care for his son, prepare for the arrival of a second child, and make the right choice?
In his new book, Angie Thomas takes us back to Garden Hollow to tell Starr’s father’s story seventeen years before the events described in "The Hate U Give".