– by Christopher Rice

Four high school students in present-day New Orleans are torn apart by envy, passion, and tragedy.Meredith, Brandon, Greg, and Stephen quickly discover the fragile boundaries between friendship and betrayal as they enter high school and form new alliances. Brandon and Greg gain popularity as football jocks and Meredith joins the bulimic in-crowd, while Stephen becomes the target of homophobia in a school that viciously mocks him. Then two violent deaths disrupt the core of what they once shared.Five years later, the friends are drawn back together as new facts about their mutual history are revealed, and what was held to be a tragic accident is discovered to be murder. As the true story emerges, other secrets begin to unravel and the casual cruelties of high school develop into acts of violence that threaten an entire city.A Density of Souls is a stunning debut novel that lays bare the darker side of the teenage experience in modern-day America.