Can you tell us about your son
and why this might have happened?
At first I thought
Mom wouldn't answer,
but then she did.
Because he's a teenage boy.
Because he didn't think first."
I have long been envious of those writers who can tell a praiseworthy tale in narrative verse. So few words to tell a memorable story so perfectly. That is what Betty Culley has done for me (and I'm sure for many others) in this novel-in-verse that looks at a family forever changed by an accident with a gun.
Jonah and Clay are best friends, spending time together whenever possible. They are neighbors, and teenage boys. Jonah's younger sister is the narrator of this heartbreaking look at an incomprehensible and life-changing event.
"We get to decide -
Mom, the nurses,
and me,
his fifteen -year-old sister.
Is that how it is in families,
one child with bad hands,
one child with good?
Jonah's bad hands found a gun
in Clay's attic."
One small mistake is made by a teenager, just fooling around; life is indelibly and forever changed for two families. Jonah is now on life support. Liv, our narrator, can barely comprehend this new life she is living. School offers no respite. Jonah is a permanent figure in the family living room, with round-the-clock nursing care. Members of their small community feel it is their right to send letters to the paper blaming poor parenting for the accident. The debate over gun control rages while Liv and her family try to move from one day to the next.
When her mother decides to take Clay and his family to court, things go from bad to worse. Clay is consumed by his role in Jonah's accident and quits school, his mother wants desperately to connect with Liv concerning their anguish over the events, and Liv's mother is insistent that the only way they will have enough money to support Jonah and his many needs in the future is to win their case for wrongful death.
Liv spends as much time as she can with her brother, feeling that he is in there somewhere despite assurances that he is not. She is the only one who can calm him night and day. She finds solace in going down to the riverbank where the old mill still stands. There, she has the chance to be on her won, to talk with Clay about the grief they are both feeling. It is a heartbreaking tragedy, with hopeful moments. Liv's voice is poignant and strong. She finds strength in her brother's spirit, in Clay's friendship and in the support of Jonah's caregivers.
Beautiful and realistic, it tells the story of two families in crisis. There are no easy answers to the lasting repercussions caused by one brief moment in time.
"I stop paddling
to watch a hawk
overhead,
and steer over to the riverbank
to touch a water lily.
The best part of
being on the river
is that there's nothing
that needs to be done
except staying afloat."
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