The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard

What do you do when the person you love best becomes unrecognizable to you? For Thea Demetriou, the answer is both simple and agonizing: you keep loving him somehow.

Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the drug-fueled murder of his girlfriend, Belinda. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanizes the community to rally against him to protest her daughter’s memory. The media paints Stefan as a symbol of white privilege and indifferent justice. Neighbors, employers, and even some members of Thea’s own family turn away.

Meanwhile, Thea struggles to understand her son. At times, he is still the sweet boy he has always been; at others, he is a young man tormented by guilt and almost broken by his time in prison. But as his efforts to make amends meet escalating resistance and threats, Thea suspects more forces are at play than just community outrage. And if there is so much she never knew about her own son, what other secrets has she yet to uncover – especially about the night Belinda died?

Join the Cookies Bookies book club to discuss this title on Thursday, June 16, at 6 pm at the Stoutland Library. Cookies Bookies meets at 6 pm on the third Thursday of the month.

Copies of The Good Son are available in ebook from Libby. Anyone with a Camden County Library District library card can sign up for a free Libby account. Do you need a library card? See what you will need to bring with you to get a library card today. Copies of the book and audiobook are also available for pick up at the Stoutland Library.