Cher Gatto

Winner of the 2016 Genesis Award, the 2020 Christian Indie Award for Best YA, and a finalist in the 2020 Carol Award for Best YA. SOMETHING I AM NOT is a powerful look at the insidious world of human trafficking right in our own backyard, and the redemptive story of a young man's fight to get out. A father who never loved him. A woman who stole his worth. A brother he couldn't protect. Where does someone run in the face of his deepest shame? Billy McQueen works hard to keep his life together and concealed. At seventeen, he dreams of an escape from his father's abuse and the advances of his father’s girlfriend. On his eighteenth birthday, he is introduced to a younger brother he never knew—an eight-year-old barely capable of navigating the corrupt underworld of his father’s boxing club. In order to protect his little brother, Billy has to find a way out for both of them. But before he can, his death is fabricated and he is sold by his own father to a wealthy old maid. His brother is used as leverage for his compliance. Billy must now fight to secure his freedom and save his little brother who is next in line for the slave trade.