WHAT WE SAW

A meditation on the varying degrees of culpability held by attendants at a small-town house party where a girl has been raped, and a cover-up has ensued.

The party last Saturday night is a bit of a blur. Kate Weston can piece together most of the bash at John Doone’s house: shots with Stacey Stallard, Ben Cody taking her keys and getting her home early – the feeling that maybe he is becoming more than just the guy she has known since they were kids.

But when a picture of Stacey passed out over Deacon Mills’s shoulder appears online the next morning, Kate suspects she does not have all the details, and begins to ask questions. What really happened at the party after she left? Who was still there? What did they see?

When Stacey levels charges against four of Kate’s classmates, the whole town erupts into controversy. Facts that cannot be ignored begin to surface, and every answer Kate finds leads back to the same question: Where was Ben when a terrible crime was committed?

This story, inspired by real events, from debut novelist Aaron Hartzler takes an unflinching look at silence as a form of complicity. It is a book about the high stakes of speaking up, and the razor thin line between guilt and innocence that so often gets blurred, one hundred and forty characters at a time.

Aaron Hartzler is the author of the critically acclaimed YA memoir Rapture Practice. He lives in southern California with his boyfriend Nate and their two dogs Charlie and Brahms. WHAT WE SAW is his first work of fiction.