West Rome

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Austin Woodman has spent his life avoiding waves. In the small tight-knit town of Hopewell Michigan the son of a respected pastor learns early how to smile politely keep his head down and maintain the fragile peace his family depends on. With his two best friends-Lucas a musically gifted orphan navigating the foster system and Bree the sharp-tongued granddaughter of a powerful real estate mogul-Austin is simply counting down the days until graduation when he can finally escape the expectations and gossip that follow him everywhere.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>But everything changes when a red-haired farm boy named Tucker steps unexpectedly into his life. What begins as an unlikely friendship slowly pulls Austin toward questions he has never dared to ask-about his future his family's carefully preserved image and the truth of who he really is. The deeper he's drawn into Tucker's world the harder it becomes to balance the version of himself that everyone in Hopewell expects with the person he feels he might be.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Set over the course of a transformative junior year </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>West Rome: The Babblings of a Midwestern Teenager</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is a poignant character-driven coming-of-age story. It explores the messy intersections of friendship love abuse addiction and faith revealing how resilience often takes root in the quietest corners. At its heart it's a story about learning to resist-not through loud dramatic gestures but through small acts of honesty that chip away at the walls keeping us apart.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Sometimes the bravest rebellions don't make noise-they whisper the truth.</span></p><p></p>