Some books, some characters, come to life for readers. You find yourself shaking your head, wiping away tears and swallowing down anger and frustration. And, even when you close the book, it stays with you – like song lyrics you can’t get out of your head. You find yourself using the story, or the characters, as a measure for your own actions, reactions and perceptions. Nic Stone’s Dear Martin is one of those rare and amazing books.

Dear Martin is an important book for more reasons than I can possibly outline in this post – it is raw, it is compelling and it is painfully real. Justyce McAllister is a seventeen year old high school student at a prep school in Atlanta. He is at the top of his class, on the debate team and headed to Yale. However, despite doing everything he can to be successful and respectful, he finds himself in handcuffs after trying to help a friend. This interaction with police shakes his sense of self and forces him to open his eyes to what is happening to young, black men like him around the country. To help him process what he is seeing and feeling, he begins to write letters to Martin Luther King, Jr. and begins what he calls an experiment to “Be Like Martin”.

As Justyce begins to pay more attention to what is happening around him, he finds himself at a crossroads. He is struggling with the big questions: How can he make a difference? How can he prevent himself from being drowned by hopelessness? How can he speak up about injustice and call out others for their ignorance and prejudice without resorting to violence?

Nic Stone is a remarkable writer. She creates incredible characters that grab you and don’t let go. She also brilliantly weaves the lives of Justyce, and his friends and family, with current events and overall themes of social justice, history, racial profiling, community and more. Stone also doesn’t pretend everything is “fixed” as the book ends. While there is a satisfying conclusion to the novel itself, the book offers more questions than answers and the distance between the two remains with readers – as it should.

Read this book. Open your eyes. Force yourself to examine what is happening in our country and ask yourself why. Put yourself in Justyce’s shoes. Let yourself feel…and then do something.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.