Absent On School Picture Day: Class of 1998 Book 1

What if honest words spoken in anger led to murder? The unsolved 1998 murder of a recent high school graduate weighs heavy on her classmates for more than twenty years. Anneewakee McWhorter’s story is frozen in time as her peers try to survive adulthood. The Great Recession, natural disasters, addictions, and guilt plague Generation Y as they continue to seek justice for one of their own.

Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia experienced explosive growth in the five years that it had to prepare for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Just outside of Atlanta, small town Douglasville was poised to transition from rural town to urban city in a few short years. New opportunities attracted the nouveau riche, power hungry politicians, families, human traffickers, law enforcement, and crime lords alike. Douglas County, and its Douglasville county seat, becomes a pressure cooker of unbridled construction, crime, raw expectations, and blind ambition fueled by social climbing Baby Boomers with hearts set on ‘80s materialism and wealth.

Under the belief that she is imparting critical advice, an English teacher and her words continue to influence the lives of her students long after they have left her Douglas County High School classroom. But, was she always right? The class of 1998 forge bonds, test relationships, and grow together in an ever-changing world while the murder of Anneewakee, also known as Anne, still looms large. New case leads and decades of advancement in forensic technology offer hope to Anne’s family that her murderer may still be brought to justice.

Will those involved work together to find justice for Anne? Or, will the witnesses swallow their secrets for decades and take them to the grave still in their bellies.