Phillip Wilhite

Surviving Chadwick Phillip Wilhite

CALIFORNIA, 1973. After being awarded a scholarship to attend an elite boarding school in Ojai, California, fifteen-year-old Isaiah Issacson is plucked from his inner-city Oakland neighborhood and thrust into a new-and frightening- atmosphere. But Isaiah doesn't embrace this new life. Most of the students at Chadwick are rich, spoiled, and white. Unfortunately, his parents, Southern-born and part of the 1950s exodus by African Americans to the West Coast, view Isaiah's scholarship as an opportunity to fulfill Martin Luther King's dreams of racial and educational equality. Too bad Isaiah doesn't see it that way. Coming from a drastically different background, Isaiah has a difficult time relating to any of the students, and he soon clashes with instructors and fellow classmates. After he meets the beautiful and intelligent Jenaye Gardner and begins a promising love affair, things begin to spiral more out of control. Isaiah has only one goal in mind: to get kicked out of the most elite boarding school in California. Fifteen years later. Isaiah is at a turning point in his life, successful in business, he has the opportunity to attend the Chadwick reunion, and to reconnect with his first love. Will this be the beginning of the next chapter in his life?