No going back, p.22
No Going Back, page 22
Thank you to the readers of No Going Back manuscripts: Donte Felder, Vincent Delaney, Kirsten Heiken, Doug Kasischke, Heather Shumaker, Charlie Scott, Cristián Uriostegui, and Brandon Will. Your insights, questions, suggestions, and encouragement were invaluable. Thanks to Jeff Kass for letting me try out early ideas in his creative writing classes at Pioneer High School. Thanks to my Ann Arbor critique group; to accountability pals, Kristen Lenz and Katherine Higgs-Coulthard; and to my Booksmitten podcast crew, Kelly J. Baptist, Jack Cheng, and Heather Shumaker. And thanks to Jason Harper for the great weekend writing space.
Thanks to Michelle Duffy, Tami Mills, and Maria Scott for their subject expertise.
Thanks to Ernest Flores, King County librarians, and the late Peg Phillips for inviting me inside to meet locked-up teens.
Thanks for the eternal love and support of all the Scotts and Floreses. And thanks to Emma for choosing to walk side by side with me through every twist and turn of this oddball publishing path. Lastly, thanks to Carlos and Diego for believing in, and encouraging, their writer dad.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
No Going Back is the last of a three-book cycle set in South King County in western Washington State (the other books are American Road Trip and Jumped In). The crime at the heart of No Going Back was inspired by an article about a young woman who spent time in a youth prison in Washington after setting up her friends to rob her father’s drug supplier in order to feed herself and her siblings. I wanted to set the book in Washington, my home state, where, for a short time in the 1990s, I worked teaching drama to kids in a setting very similar to the fictional Zephyr Woods. However, in an effort to create a compelling story that reflected incarceration, sentencing, probation, and parole nationally, there are details in this fictional work that are not specific to youth detention and the juvenile justice system in Washington State, where, for example, AA is not used as a mandated intervention due to separation of church and state, and sentences for teens who’ve committed nonviolent crimes are getting shorter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Flores-Scott is also the acclaimed author of the award-winning novels Jumped In and American Road Trip, which was named a YALSA Best Fiction Book, a TAYSHAS Reading List selection, an SLJ National Hispanic Heritage Month pick, and a Teen Vogue Best Gift Book and was licensed to WEBTOON for graphic digital serialization. Patrick taught public school in Seattle, Washington, for many years and has written for theater and the slam poetry stage. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his family and invites you to visit him online at patrickfloresscott.com.
Patrick Flores-Scott, No Going Back
