I Have The Right

In this honest and raw memoir, Prout shares her experience as a 15-year-old victim of sexual assault by an older student at New Hampshire's St. Paul's School in 2014. With a sometimes confusing structure, Prout chronicles her first (and final) year at the boarding school.

Leading up to the assault, she writes about battling homesickness, navigating a rocky friendship, and struggling to find her place at a school where, she perceives, "everything was about status, tradition, and hierarchy—and guys ruled all three." She also reflects on surviving a terrifying earthquake in Tokyo in 2011, where she temporarily lived with her family.

Prout's descriptions of her assault and its crushing emotional aftermath (involving self-doubt, guilt, shame, peer ostracizing, and cyber-bullying) and the agonizing, widely publicized trial that resulted in her assailant's conviction on some, but not all, charges brought against him, are wrenching and painful. Readers will take away a deep appreciation and admiration for Prout's resilience as she transitions into a resolute crusader for the empowerment of victims of sexual violence—and for its prevention.