When longtime animosities between a Mexican and a white American student at a Texas high school finally flare into violence, one ends up in the hospital with a broken arm and a fractured ego. A few hours later, the other ends up dead. In the reverb, friends and enemies alike are left to grapple with loss, suspicion, and rapidly escalating racial tensions. Narrated with brutal candor by six boys—each with a very different take on the week’s events—The Confessional blends murder mystery, contemporary politics, and high school drama to create a gritty, fast-paced read.
The daughter of a geologist and a journalist, J.L. Powers spent much of her childhood camping and searching for fossils in the American West, and considers herself a true "desert rat." She grew up on the U.S.-Mexico Border and, though she now lives in California, still considers El Paso "home."
She's taught African history and writing at a variety of universities and community colleges in upstate New York, Washington state, New Mexico, Texas, and California. Despite her bad Spanish, Jessica spent several years working as an editor and publicist for Cinco Puntos Press. She is semi-proficient in three languages--Spanish, Portuguese, and Zulu--and now sometimes answers in Zulu when spoken to in Spanish.
Knopf released her young adult novel, The Confessional, in July 2007. A frequent contributor to New Pages, she is currently at work on other projects, including a novel that explores youth homelessness, teen pregnancy, and the outer edge of religious fundamentalism. Partly because of her latest project, Jessica volunteers at Larkin Street Youth Services, a San Francisco organization that serves homeless youth.
In 2008, Powers founded Catalyst Book Press, a small literary press that publishes 2-3 nonfiction books each year. The closest thing she has to a hobby is searching out ghost towns in northern California and attending as many live reggae concerts as is affordable. She travels to as many different parts of the world as she possibly can. She has a husband, Chris, and a weimerener, Jamaica, and can't imagine her life without them.
