Nic Stone’s debut novel Dear Martin is an honest and deeply affecting story of loss, resilience, and race.

About ‘Dear Martin’ by Nic Stone

Justyce Mcallister is top of his class, captain of the debate team, and set for the ivy league next year—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. He is eventually released without charges (or an apology), but the incident has Justyce spooked. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood, he can’t seem to escape the scorn of his former peers or the attitude of his prep school classmates. The only exception: Sarah Jane, Justyce’s gorgeous—and white—debate partner he wishes he didn’t have a thing for.

Struggling to cope with it all, Justyce starts a journal to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But do Dr. King’s teachings hold up in the modern world? Justyce isn’t so sure.

Then comes the day Justyce goes driving with his best friend, Manny, windows rolled down, music turned up. Way up. Much to the fury of the white off-duty cop beside them. Words fly. Shots are fired. And Justyce and Manny get caught in the crosshairs. In that media fallout, it’s Justyce who is under attack. The truth of what happened that night—some would kill to know. Justyce is dying to forget.

‘Dear Martin’ book review

I started teaching on July 15, 2013 — two days after the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter started trending online for the first time in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Over the next three years of my teaching career, it was used and re-used to remember Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Mike Brown and so many — too many — others. And what began as a response became a cry of resistance, formed into a symbol of resilience, and birthed a powerful movement.

Each time the phrase trended on Twitter, each time the news looped footage of another defenseless black man or woman being murdered, I would look out into the sea of black and brown faces in my eighth grade classroom and wish I had something tangible, something real, something more to offer.

What I was looking for was this novel.

Told using a mix of third-person narrative, transcripted dialogue, and letters addressed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nic Stone’s evocative novel is as bold as it is honest.

We follow Justyce as he begins to recognize the ugliness of institutionalized racism and white privilege as he interacts with his white, wealthy prep school classmates. We see his confusion and anger as he comes face to face with the reality of racial profiling. We feel his agony, despair and overwhelming sense of injustice when he’s confronted by police brutality.

Aside from this main narrative, we also get to see Justyce’s inner frustration and thought process in his letters to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I appreciated the candor of these interludes and the way we were able to see just how complicated and difficult these ideas and issues can be and often are in the context of everyday life.

As a former teacher, I especially loved reading the interactions and conversation that went on in the classrooms. While others might be tempted to think of these characterizations as too obvious or one-note, I actually found them to be refreshingly authentic. Middle and high school students are many things, but having a filter is often not one of them, and this story was true to that.

The story that Nic Stone tells with Justyce is multi-layered, complicated, and thoughtful.

It’s also a story that might be described as important.

There are a lot of stories that we talk about being important — important because they are evocative, because they are beautifully-written, because they say something meaningful.

Nic Stone’s Dear Martin should certainly be counted among them.

But it’s also a story that goes beyond being important.

It’s a story that is necessary.

Necessary because it gives voice to those who are so often silenced, both in literature and in life. Necessary because it tells a story that we so rarely get to read. Necessary because it gives name and face to the deep injustice, the raw emotion, the unflinching truth of what it is to be young, Black, and male in our country.

It’s a deeply affecting and beautifully written novel that deserves to be at the top of your ‘to read’ list and will likely be at the top of many ‘best of’ lists at the end of this year.

Dear Martin by Nic Stone is out now! Get your copy today from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local indie bookstore and make sure to add it to your Goodreads!