Beyond the Bayou

Fifteen-year-old Malik LaSalle lives in a mansion that gleams on the surface and echoes underneath, the son of a jet-setting CEO who confuses money with love and a family learning to breathe without him. When the house is too quiet, the bayou is the only place that seems alive enough to hear him.

One sweltering night, a revival service shakes open what his family has tried to hold shut, and soon the fault lines split wide at home. Malik turns to the poems he can't say out loud, searching for...