About the Novel

Click here to watch:  Book Trailer 1


About the Novel (taken from commonsensemedia.org)

High school students Gary Searle and Brendan Lawlor enter a school dance heavily armed with automatic weapons, having chained the doors shut and booby-trapped the exits with homemade bombs. They intend a carefully-planned payback against their schoolmates, mostly members of the football team, who have persecuted and tormented them for years. Using transcripts and interviews with survivors, this fictional story torn from the headlines chronicles events leading up to, during, and following the shootings. The author includes, at the foot of many of the pages, factoids about real school shootings, guns, efforts at gun control, and statistics about death and violence in our society. He concludes with a list of related events that took place while he was writing the book, a partial list of school shootings, and a bibliography. Part of the book's proceeds are donated to gun-control organizations.

Author Todd Strasser does a frighteningly effective job of making his readers think -- about guns, bullying, and more -- and the result is one very disturbing book. Some of the ways it is disturbing are clearly intentional. Readers ready for the intense material will find a provocative and compelling novel certain to trigger much heated discussion.