The Weight of Blood

Madison Washington is an outcast at her high school in Springville, Georgia, and a regular target for bullies. She puts up with it because her home life demands more of her. Her father, Thomas Washington, is a fanatical white man, and he has made her pass for white since childhood.

Then a surprise rainstorm exposes the secret: Maddy is biracial. Around the same time, a viral video of bullying shows the racist history of Springville High to the wider world.

Student leaders respond with a plan to repair the school's image, hosting its first integrated prom as a show of unity. The white class president persuades her boyfriend, the Black star quarterback, to ask Maddy to go with him. For the first time Maddy wonders whether an ordinary life could be hers.

Some of her classmates are not finished with her, though, and Maddy is hiding a second secret. The book is a YA horror novel that draws on America's history of racism, and it opens with the town's survivors questioned about prom night. All of them give the same answer: Maddy did it. The suspense lies in how the night gets there and what it costs.