How Are You Going to Save Yourself

Dub, Rolls, Rye, and Gio, who narrates most of these nine stories, have been friends since childhood, growing up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. How Are You Going to Save Yourself covers roughly a decade of these inseparable friends weaving in and out of one another's lives as their futures diverge. Among their differences, Gio's mixed-race identity--with a black father, an NFL player whose injury washed him out, and a white mother--sets him apart from his friends, as does his eventual path to the Ivy League. As these four go from boys to men, they grapple with the newfound power of sex and drugs, with the force of their needs, and at times with the violence of their desires.