This is My America

Johnson, Kim. This is My America. 2020. 416p. ISBN 9780593118764.

At seventeen, Tracy Beaumont is dedicated to fighting for social justice, especially since her father was convicted of murder seven years ago, and will be executed in less than a year. He had an ironclad alibi, as he was at home with his family the evening when a prospective business partner and his wife were gunned down, but in this small Texas town being African-American and being refugees from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina means that you're an outsider. Tracy's father was convicted and given the death penalty. 

In the last year and a half, Tracy has written many letters to Innocence X, an organization that helps to overturn death penalty convictions. She has provided them with all of the details of her father's case, and she keeps on hoping that they will accept to represent him in a last ditch effort to save his life. Though this takes up a lot of time, Tracy is also a junior in high school, and she hopes to become the editor of her school newspaper next year. She has worked closely with Angela, the current editor, to develop Tracy's Corner, a column that focuses on social justice. When Angela approaches Tracy with a possible expose, asking her to meet her the following day, Tracy is intrigued.

But then Angela is brutally murdered, and her brother Jamal, who has been dating Angela while she was still technically the girlfriend of the sheriff's son, is accused of her murder because his coat was found on her. Jamal escapes their house and runs in the woods. Now the family is doubly suspect, with a murderer in prison, and another on the lam. Tracy knows that her brother would never have killed Angela, so what can she do to help him?

Trying to find information on the expose Angela wanted her to do, Tracy discovers that there is a white supremacist conspiracy afoot, and that Angela's murder and those of her father's business partners seven years ago might be connected. With a murderer loose, can Tracy finds proof of her brother and father's innocence before it is too late for either of them?

Fans of Dear Martin will enjoy Tracy's story and the efforts she puts in proving her father's innocence.