Ten Mile River - Paul Griffin

With spare, moving prose, Griffin makes a stunning debut with this novel about the friendship between two 13-year-old boys, who have escaped foster care and juvenile detention centers to live on their own in an abandoned building located near a Manhattan park called Ten-Mile River. \nBest friends Ray and Jose are not your typical teenagers. They've escaped foster care and juvenile detention centers to live on their own together in an abandoned stationhouse in New York City's Ten Mile River Park. Ray and Jose are as close as brothers. But then they meet Trini, the smart, beautiful, and confident girl from their local barber shop, and they both fall for her immediately. As tension creeps into their relationship, Ray must struggle to find an identity separate from Jose and try to envision a future for himself beyond Jose and Ten Mile River. \nGriffin has a particular gift for dialogue that not only sounds authentic but also serves to define characters whom he knows inside and out. His is clearly a talent to watch. - Booklist, review of Ten Mile River\n