When We Ride: A Novel

by Rex Ogle

Overview

Rex Ogle explores bonds of loyalty and friendship and how they’re tested by drugs and violence in this propulsive novel-in-verse.

Diego Benevides works hard. His single mother encourages him to stay focused on school, on getting into college, on getting out of their crumbling neighborhood. That’s why she gave him her car.

Diego’s best friend, Lawson, needs a ride—because Lawson is dealing. As long as Diego’s not carrying, not selling, it’s cool. It’s just weed.

But when Lawson starts carrying powder and pills and worse, their friendship is tested and their lives are threatened. As the lines between dealer and driver blur, everything Diego has worked for is jeopardized, and he faces a deadly reckoning with the choices he and his best friend have made.

Award-winning memoirist and poet Rex Ogle’s searing first novel-in-verse is an unforgettable story of the power and price of loyalty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324052821
Publisher:	Norton Young Readers
Publication date:	03/25/2025
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Rex Ogle is the author of Free Lunch, which won the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award; Abuela Don’t Forget Me, a finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award; Punching Bag; and the novel When We Ride. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Editorial Reviews

"Ogle’s excellent, hard-edged novel in verse is a cautionary tale bound to invite thought and serious discussion. An important book."

Booklist

★ 2024-11-23
A hardworking high school senior strives to keep his future bright while driving around his drug-dealing friend.

Benny and Lawson, both raised by struggling single moms after their fathers left, are neighbors, best friends, and total opposites. Lawson, a white boy who’s charismatic and popular, goes to school mainly to deal drugs—not to study. Mexican American Benny, who’s quiet and studious, ranks near the top of their class. Lawson helps Benny come out of his shell at parties and stands up for him against bullies, and Benny is there when Lawson needs a ride. Benny’s mom holds down multiple cleaning jobs, works to stay sober, and encourages her son to go to college. By contrast, Lawson’s mom, who’s on welfare, depends on Lawson dealing marijuana to make rent. As graduation nears, the duo find themselves on dangerously different paths. Feeling trapped by his dependent mother and a new, violent drug boss, Lawson starts selling harder drugs. The risk of getting arrested or attacked because of Lawson’s drug dealing terrifies Benny, who threatens to stop driving Lawson around. Written in swift, emotive verse from Benny’s perspective, this work will leave readers empathizing with Benny’s struggle to prioritize his own future while remaining loyal to the childhood best friend he genuinely wants to help. But it’s the expertly paced plot twist at the end that makes Benny and Lawson’s story heartbreakingly unforgettable.

Achingly, beautifully written.(Verse fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews