On her first day at her new school, Lucia watches another student collapse under the bumper of her grandfather’s beer truck. When the boy dies, the school’s two most popular girls hang posters of a newspaper photograph showing Lucia looking at the injured boy with cold disinterest and turn the entire school against her.
Lucia visits her great grandmother and takes an interest in a quadriplegic boy who is neglected by the nursing home staff. Meanwhile, the boy who died, goes to the afterlife, meets his guardian angel and realizes his greatest error in life was to ignore his younger brother after he became a quadriplegic. Lucia and the boy who died both work to make life better for the quadriplegic boy while Lucia endures a school that despises her.
For readers age 10-14. The book has elements of magical realism but its primary focus is on the ancient practice of shunning which is still popular in modern society and fueled by bullies who embrace the practice.