Like Water — T. Thorn Coyle

"Alex was like that. Brash. Bright. Confident. Something was always cracking him up, making him angry, or stabbing him in the chest with grief. I was more measured, more internal, stuck inside my books. He brought me into the world and, in ways my mother never could, though she tried her damnedest, he brought the world to me. Alex was my friend. My brother. My comrade. My teacher. One day he was laughing on a bright summer sidewalk. What seemed liked seconds later, he was gone." Welcome to the streets of Oakland, CA. Meet Alex and Jonah. Best friends since childhood: the poet and the professor, one black, one white. One dead -killed by police with a Taser to the heart- and one bereft, trying to figure out how to go on living...and how to find justice. Immersed in a world of hip hop and politics, Alex and Jonah-and their girlfriends Amber and Calliah-navigate the urban, magical surrealist landscape known as Oakland. This vital, gripping novel stays with readers long after the book is closed. "Like Water is a love letter to both the streets of Oakland and the youth who walk them. It tells of the city's history as well as the conflagrations threatening to devour it. These are characters attempting to love through the fire." - Nayomi Munaweera author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors