The Golden Hour - Niki Smith
After witnessing a favorite teacher get shot in his small-town Kansas school, Manuel suffers from PTSD and uses photography as an anchor to ground himself when he gets panic attacks. He befriends two kids, Sebastian and Caysha, and begins to break out of his shell slowly. Sebastian rises cows and Caysha raises chickens, and Manuel provides photographs for the farm show. But after an overwhelming attack at a four-day overnight camp, the farm show may be a no-go. This is an optimistic, poignant look at how friendships can help people recover from trauma and how strength returns slowly. The title is explained only in the after-pages that show various stages of character development and so on: it's a photography term for sunset light. There is a not-so-subtle undertone of queer romance between Manuel and Sebastian, never actually named or shown. [4]
