title: Stealing Hope
author: Clanton, Barbara L.
description: Sam Payton is a high school senior with a bit of an identity crisis. Raised in a well-to-do family, she dutifully plays the role of Samantha Rose Payton the wealthy debutante. Now, almost one full year into her life-changing relationship with Lisa Brown, Sam is hit with many life-challenging events. Her best friend, Susie Torres, is struggling with alcohol addiction and a wrecked home life as her parents go through a bitter divorce, and Sam tries to help her friend keep her head above water. In another struggle, two friends cross the line between friendship and intimacy - a line that should not have been approached, and Sam finds herself trying to make them see how incredibly serious the transgressions were for all involved. And to top it all off, Sam's mother is diagnosed with a serious illness.
  Through the love of her parents and her girlfriend, Sam navigates these challenges the best way she can all while trying to fulfill everyone's varying expectations of her. Sam struggles to break free of the preconceived roles she seems to be bound by to figure out who she really is. It ultimately comes down to whether Sam can make everyone see that she is both a softball-playing ice-hockey-loving lesbian named Sam as well as a classically-music trained debutante named Samantha Rose.