Just finished S.A. Harazin's Blood Brothers. Recent high school graduate, Clay, has had some tough breaks in life. His mom died giving birth to him and his dad has been kind of lost ever since. His older sister, who really raised Clay, moved out of town years earlier to pursue a music career, unsuccessfully. Joey has been Clay's best friend since Clay's family moved nearby when he was seven, and Joey's dad helped Clay's dad get a job. Joey's family lives in a nice house, has just about everything they want, and Joey is headed to Duke to study pre-med. Clay and his dad live in a tiny apartment and he works at the local hospital as a med tech, dreaming of someday becoming a doctor. On his way home from work one night, Clay finds Joey, uncharacteristically, under the influence of something and acting pretty wild, including attacking Clay. When Clay pushes Joey away in self-defense, Joey falls back and hits his head on a concrete floor. Clay had already been on the phone with a 911 operator trying to get help for Joey, so an ambulance and the police appear pretty quickly. Things seem to be OK, but Joey later slips into a coma before he can tell anyone what happened. The police, Joey's parents, and most of the kids in town think Clay tried to hurt Joey in a fight over a girl. Despite his life getting awfully complicated awfully quickly, Clay vows to find out what happened to Joey and set the record straight for both of them. The author is a former nurse, so I'm presuming that the medical terminology, which there is plenty of, is accurate. Don't let that frighten you away from this one. It's in there so that you can actually be inside Clay's head. Clay is a very likable character that I found myself pulling for. There are several back stories about Clay's family, his relationship with Joey, the issues with the girl, a planned cross-country bike trip, the relationship that develops between Clay and the police chief, Clay's job at the hospital, etc., that all get resolved by the end, some positively, and some not. A quick read that packs a lot of punch.
Enjoy!
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