Boy A

"Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile prison institutions. At 24, he is utterly innocent of the world, yet guilty of a monstrous childhood crime. How guilty? Who was the boy who committed that crime, and is he the same person who can now survive only by hiding his real identity?" "To his new friends, he is a nice young man with occasional flashes of unexplained violence and fear. To his girlfriend, he is mysterious and strangely inexperienced. To an invisible lynch mob, he is someone to be closely watched and ultimately punished. And to himself, Jack is on permanent trial: can he make it? Can a person really start from scratch, forget the past, become someone else? Is a new name enough? Does he have a right to forget his own childhood, having taken someone else's?"--BOOK JACKET.