The author writes well, and creates a good story. There were a few more characters than I normally enjoy following in a story, overall he did a great job. His characters POV regarding race relations was interesting and does a service to use fiction to share real issues people face.

School Superintendent, Julia Turner returns home to Dayton, Ohio to take charge of a private Christian and pay some kind of penance for a tragedy she caused when she was thirteen-years-old. But when she learns that a detective is still investigating the matter, will her faith lead her to a confession?

Cassandra Gilette was excited and tense about her friend, Julia Turners return to Dayton. For the past twenty years she's been the target of an unsolved mystery. Julia's return resurfaces the events that happened that night and add more clues to the puzzle. Will the ladies remember what happened that night before they lose their mates, their professional lives and their souls? (Grand Central, 273pp, $13.995)

This book starts out as a flashback and centers around Eddie and his brother Peter. The book gains twenty years in the next chapter and focuses on Cassie and her current situation with her separated husband, Marcus. He had an affair with a much younger co-worker and Cassie and her eldest son are having a hard time with that. The couple is in the middle of reconciliation when the story begins. The couple's eldest son, M.J. is at a crossroads in his life with God and trying to stay away from the wrong crowds.
Another main character that is introduced is Julia Turner, who is a best friend of Cassie. She is on the school board of the Christian Light School where they attended twenty years previously. The story unfolds around an event from the past that is long forgotten that is brought up again. Each character has their own memory of what happened that day, but the time the pieces of the puzzle are put together, the initial memory cannot be fully complete. A detective Whitlock starts poking around Cassie and has information on the events that took place years before involving his brother, Eddie. He blackmails Cassie threatening to throw her son in jail if she doesn't give a full confession to incapacitating his brother in an attack at the school.
Cassie and Julia meet with the other girls who were involved in the attack on Eddie and discuss their options. Most of the girls have spent their lives since this happened involved with the church and have asked for forgiveness. Nobody wants to confess what happened until it gets more heated with the Detective.
Cassie's son M.J. starts hanging out with Dante, who is a Cassie's nephew and a known drug dealer. During this time, Marcus has an altercation with the Detective and is thrown in jail. M.J. and Dante confront the Detective and get into a gun battle with him. Both Dante and the Detective wind up in the hospital, and M.J. goes into hiding. Cassie has no choice but to go to the hospital and agree to confess against what happened to Eddie in exchange for no involvement with her son in the gunfight.
Cassie had typed up a resignation letter and was going to resign from the board and face her fate. Jake, one of the boys from the school steps forward and recounts what really happened. As Cassie was being attacked from Eddie and the other girls appeared and beat him up in self-defense, Jake was hiding in the bushes and saw it happen. He felt guilty by leaving and knowing what Eddie had done, or could have done to Cassie. He gets into a fight with Eddie, and we learn that he was the cause of Eddie's accident.
In the end, the girls ask for forgiveness from Eddie's mother, Edna and they go to Eddies' room to pray for him. I think this book would be great for group discussion and I really did enjoy this book. There are a lot of good bible quotes in the book as well.