Lenny's life was never good. There was nothing he could do about it until the time came to escape.
Sixteen-year-old Lenny has learned one rule the hard way: when the adults in your life fall apart, you take care of yourself.
With his mother in prison on a drug conviction and nowhere else to go, Lenny is sent from the urban poverty of Chicago to live with the grandparents he barely knows on their rural Illinois farm. He keeps his head down, does his chores, and waits for the day he can return home.
Then his grandparents fall dangerously ill.
Suddenly, Lenny is responsible for keeping the household—and himself—going while the outside world barely notices. His only real connection is Misty, the guarded girl from the neighboring farm who understands more about broken families than she lets on.
But as Lenny uncovers the pain, resentment, and choices that shaped his family long before he was born, he begins to understand what he has truly inherited.
And he faces a choice no sixteen-year-old should have to make.
Raw, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Kid America is a powerful coming-of-age novel about family dysfunction, generational trauma, resilience, and one teenager’s determination to break the cycle before it becomes his future.
