WrittenWord
Synopsis
Jefferson Monroe Adams (no, seriously) is thrilled when his younger sister gives him a new diary for his fourteenth birthday--even if it is covered in glittery pink fur. He resumes recording his life immediately, choosing to write in haiku this time around. He alternates between the usual thoughts of a teenage boy--going to Boy Scout meetings, hanging out with his friends, and developing a crush on the girl he's been friends with since kindergarten--and a more unique passion: politics.
And he happens to be in the perfect place to nourish ambitions of becoming President of the United States. Living in Arlington, Virginia, scant miles from Washington, D.C., Jefferson has an added advantage: his mother works as a civilian contractor for the Department of Defense, and his father was a Secret Service agent before being killed in the line of duty. Encouraged by his mother, he has a front-row seat to the spectacle of the 2000 Presidential Election. When the winner is finally declared, Jefferson believes he has witnessed the most monumental event of his life.
He is wrong.
Mere days into his sophomore year of high school, Jefferson's world is shaken, literally and figuratively, when he is forced to evacuate his school. A plane has crashed into the nearby Pentagon. Jefferson's mother survives through a fluke, and it shakes her to her very core, leaving her shell-shocked and broken. As he strives to be strong for his sisters and mother, to prove himself to both sides of his family, and to re-establish his identity in a world stood on its head, the question hovers in the background: Who will be strong for him?
