Posted on 3 Comments

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland

According to sixteen-year-old Zander Osborne, nowhere is an actual place―and she’s just fine there. But her parents insist that she get out of her head―and her home state―and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.

Zander does not fit in―or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.

But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.

Posted on 3 Comments

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland

According to sixteen-year-old Zander Osborne, nowhere is an actual place – and she’s just fine there. But her parents insist that she get out of her head – and her home state – and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.

Zander does not fit in – or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.

But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.

Posted on 3 Comments

The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland

According to sixteen-year-old Zander Osborne, nowhere is an actual place―and she’s just fine there. But her parents insist that she get out of her head―and her home state―and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.

Zander does not fit in―or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.

But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.

Posted on Leave a comment

Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland

Two victims of the infamous Cleveland kidnapper share the story of their abductions, their decade in captivity, and their final, dramatic rescue

On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry made headlines around the world when she fled a Cleveland area home and called 911, saying: “Help me, I’m Amanda Berry. . . . I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for ten years.”

A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight to his home, where he kept them chained in the basement. In the decade that followed, the three were raped, psychologically abused, and threatened with death. Berry bore a child—Jocelyn—by their captor.

Drawing upon their recollections and the diaries they kept, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus describe a tale of unimaginable torment, and Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro’s house with the ongoing efforts to find the missing girls.

The full story behind the headlines—including shocking information never previously released—Hope is a harrowing yet inspiring chronicle of three women whose courage, ingenuity, and resourcefulness ultimately delivered them back to their lives and families.

Read by Jorjeana Marie, Marisol Ramirez and Arthur Morey.