Exit Strategy

Potter’s debut is set in Blaine, Mich., a fictional Detroit suburb dependent on its automotive assembly plant for jobs. Zach is desperate to leave after his senior year, hoping to avoid the fate of his parents, who have lived and worked in Blaine their whole lives. In the meantime, he becomes determined to expose his football coach, who he suspects is supplying steroids to athletes, and his best friend Tank’s father, an undercover cop who he thinks is mistreating his children and having an affair. Zach’s righteous motivations are not quite clear; he tells readers, “I’m about the farthest thing from a hero as one can get,” and he has no problem stealing and reselling beer from his party store job (“by the end of my second week, I’m doing physical labor for no more than two hours per shift... which eventually leads to a lot of smoking, drinking, and stealing”). The working-class setting feels well realized, but secondary characters and subplots—Zach’s parents’ strained marriage, his attraction to Tank’s newly hot twin sister—are less so. Ages 12–up. (Mar.)