Description: Nothing is like it used to be. If it were, Mama would still be alive. Papa wouldn't have died. And Charlie would still be the same old loving big brother to thirteen-year-old Lafayette, not a hostile stranger just back from doing time at a correctional facility. Oldest brother Ty'ree would have gone to college, instead of having to work full time to support the three of them. And Lafayette wouldn't be so full of questions, like why Mama had to die, why Charlie hates him so much now, and how they're all supposed to survive these times together when so much seems to be set against them.

Jacqueline Woodson brings us the story of three remarkable young men -- brothers who have only each other to rely on and must decide whether they'll work with that or let it tear them apart.

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Reviews: Twelve-year-old Lafayette and his older brothers Ty'ree and Charlie are Milagro's-Miracle's-boys. Three years have passed since Milagro died of insulin shock, and their father died rescuing a woman and her dog from an icy lake just before Lafayette was born. A few months ago Charlie returned home from the juvenile detention center after serving three years for robbing a store. The boys attempt to deal with their guilt and grief individually, although it was Milagro's fondest wish for them to work together as brothers. Ty'ree dropped out of college to raise Lafayette and Charlie, and Lafayette thinks of him as completely good. He sees "Newcharlie," the brother whom he no longer knows after his time away, as completely evil. Eventually Lafayette realizes that none of them are all good or all bad, and that only by bonding together as their mother had wished can they cope with their mutual grief over the way their lives have developed. The ending wraps everything up a little too neatly and...

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