Nick Brooks in conversation about Promise Boys, his new YA thriller tackling racism in Charter Schools

A quick Google search for “charter schools US” throws up headlines such as “Charter Schools: Fairness of Grades Questioned” and “Florida School Districts Push Struggling Charter Schools to Improve”. Similar to academies here in the UK, charter schools in America are publicly funded but independently run and the reaction to them on the other side of the Atlantic is mixed: many improve standards and get kids from underprivileged backgrounds into university, but they can drive a wedge between communities. They also rely on fundraising and often have impossibly high standards for students.

“These kids are carefully selected and curated just to make sure that they get the results that the school needs to be able to continue to get their funding,” says Nick Brooks, who spent several years working as an educator and is the author of the upcoming YA thriller Promise Boys, which was sold to Macmillan in a massive seven-figure deal.

If a child is not getting the right grades or behaving correctly, or if they are just too tough to deal with, the charter school will simply kick them out. The three main characters in Promise Boys—J B, Ramon and Trey—all struggle to keep to the crazy rules the school has around how they stand, when they speak and so on, but they are just normal kids: Ramon loves to cook, Trey plays basketball, and J B is mostly interested in getting the clever and beautiful Keyana to be his girlfriend. Yet when the villain of the story, Principal Moore, the man who created the Urban Promise Prep School, is dramatically murdered, suspicion falls on these three ordinary young men.

These boys go through school and what is being stripped from them is their life

"Boys like these are held to impossible standards, says Brooks. “To be upwardly mobile in America, particularly if you are a Black man in America, you have to be what I like to call the ‘Triple A’—acceptable, approachable and accessible. If you are not, you will find yourselves on the fringes. These boys have to fit in one box.”

It is important to remember that the real problem is decades of inequality and that what are deemed to be behavioural problems are in fact issues stemming from structural, societal problems such as poverty or racism, Brooks says. He even has some sympathy for the Principal, who in his own way is trying to give these boys the tools to live a good life.

“He is a victim because he truly believes that it has to be this way. That there is no other way for these boys.”

But there is something karmic about his death, too. “These boys go through school and what is being stripped from them is their life. And the life that he was sucking from these boys in the end cost him his own life.”

By contrast, the women in the book, from Keyana to the teacher Mrs Hall and Ramon’s cousin, are all pretty amazing, treating their young men with the love and respect they deserve. When Brooks was growing up, in a tough neighbourhood, a lot of the men were on the streets or were in prison, and it was the amazing Black women in his life who held the community together and helped to make him the person he is today.

Licence to thrill

Why turn this story into a thriller? “The stories I loved the most growing up were all mysteries, anything from Scooby-Doo to the Hardy Boys and the Baby-Sitters Club,” he smiles. “That’s just the genre that grabs me. Sometimes artists—especially my generation, the Millennials—have a tendency to lead with the medicine first, but I just really like entertaining stories.”

Brooks grew up in Washington DC and as a teenager he became a rapper, but when that plan fell through he went to Howard University and began working for a non-profit organisation called Concerned Black Men, which helps African American men and women empower the next generation of Black youth. After graduation he joined Teach for America and self-published some children’s books before getting a scholarship to the University of Southern California to study film. He achieved an amazing amount in a short period of time, and his short film, “Hoop Dreamin’”, won the George Lucas Scholar Award. He also spent some time working on season three of “The Mandalorian” but then, of course, Covid hit and the entire movie industry shut down.

I never went in thinking I was going to write this thing to make a bunch of money

As a life-long artist, he knew that the one thing he still had was the ability to sit down and write, so he started to create all kinds of things—not just novels but also short stories and songs—and children’s books felt like “a natural thing to turn back to”.

From fact to fiction

The first 60 pages just flew out of him, he says. “This is my world, right? This is where I grew up. I’m just jumping into these different shoes and imagining. If this were to happen at my charter school, what would people be saying?”

Once he finished the manuscript, getting a publishing deal was “pretty straightforward”, he says modestly, and the book was sold in a big deal. “Everyone” was interested but the winning publisher was Macmillan; Henry Holt Books for Young Readers in the US and Macmillan UK jointly acquired world English-language rights.

“I never went in thinking I was going to write this thing to make a bunch of money,” says Brooks, “but it felt good knowing that people were drawn to my voice. It’s all a bit of a whirlwind.” There will also be a TV adaptation, although the author can’t yet reveal any more details.

When the book does come out next year, what does he want people to gain from the book, apart from being entertained?