My current writing project is the memoir of a childhood friend.

Here's the latest version of my pitch:

Karen Murphy, a gifted, white fourteen-year-old, feels her anxiety building as she reads countless newspaper articles, and listens to her older sister's accounts of assaults and vandalism at the inner city school she will soon attend in northern California's San Francisco East Bay, at the height of the racially charged 1960s. Karen's fears are realized on the first day of class when her sister's friend is attacked in a campus bathroom.

Karen quickly discovers that her greatest threat is her teachers, who not only are incapable of mitigating the campus unrest, but in fact, unwittingly widen the racial chasm among students with biased, potentially explosive, class assignments.

As the months pass, Karen develops friendships and learns survival skills. Just as she begins to feel that she may complete the school year without suffering any physical harm, she steps out of her early orchestra class and into pandemonium.

Will Karen escape injury in the campus riot that erupts on the day of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination?