Nobody Wants to Remember

Kackie Aiken is seventeen, sharp-tongued, and ready to leave Mandeville behind. After a summer in New York City, she returns home convinced she has outgrown her small town-and the small minds she has always blamed for its limits. But when her teacher partners her with Walt Singletary, a new Black student at Mandeville's primarily white prep school, Kackie is pulled into a project on the Civil Rights Movement that refuses to stay in the past.

Set against the backdrop of historic Mandeville's tricentennial celebration, the story unfolds under the menacing gaze of Mayor Tommy Cooper, whose influence seeps into the school, the streets, and the silence that holds the town together. As Kackie and Walt seek out the truth, hostility intensifies in the classroom and beyond. Old loyalties strain. New affections complicate everything. And the deeper Kackie looks, the more she realizes the history her family avoided is still shaping who gets protected, who gets blamed, and who gets to belong.

Nobody Wants to Remember is a soulful and heartbreaking coming-of-age story about confession and repentance, even when they cost what you most hold dear; and about how, especially for Kackie and Walt, the truth may not always set you free.