Promise Boys

THE PROMISE BOYS are Trey Jackson, Ramón Zambaro, and J.B. Williams. They've been given what seems like an extraordinary opportunity when they become students at Urban Promise Prep, the best all-boys charter school in Washington, D.C. It's a place that promises to turn boys into men and set them on a path to college and a secure future. But Principal Moore has created an atmosphere of toxic masculinity at the school and put in place a harsh set of rules (no "fraternizing" with fellow students and demerits for anyone not marching out of class with their hands locked behind their backs) that make the school day an emotional minefield for many students. Trey, one of the school's basketball stars, has moved from New York City to live with his strict and sometimes abusive ex-Marine uncle after his mother lost custody. With his father serving time in jail, J.B. lives with his mother in a housing project. He works hard at school, determined to make a future where he can take care of his mom and a future wife. Ramón dreams of being a chef and owning his own restaurant, but his cousin César leads a violent gang called Dioses del Humo and is pressuring Ramón to join. In the day before the murder, all of the boys have angry confrontations with Principal Moore (one even threatened to kill him), so the police immediately focus on the them and bring each of the boys in to be interrogated. As the story unfolds, multiple voices (the boys themselves, family members, other students, a former teacher, a coach, a girlfriend) reveal what they know about the time around the murder and whether they think one of the boys could be the killer. But it's only when Trey, Ramón, and J.B. put their suspicions about one another aside and decide to work together that the murderer is revealed.