Donna Decker's Blog: ANY GOOD BOOKS? - Posts Tagged "sue-klebold"

Such an important book is A MOTHER’S RECKONING: LIVING IN THE AFTERMATH OF TRAGEDY by Sue Klebold (2016). Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, infamous for his massacre of fellow students and one teacher at Columbine High School in 1999. After the tragedy, polls indicated that the majority of Americans blamed the parents of the two shooters. Many law suits were levied against them. Sue Klebold understands this feeling, admits she would have felt the same way were her child killed in such a merciless fashion. Yet, she presents a sympathetic character. Readers empathize because Klebold takes us through her life in detail – the build up to the tragedy and the unbearable aftermath. She convinces readers she did not know, could not have seen such a horror coming. The boy who committed that crime, the boy who spewed hatred on the Basement Tapes (which she watched after the killings, when they were “released” to the families for viewing) was someone she had never known. Why is this book so important? Because we hunker down in “safety” by believing school shooters are monsters, that they can be spotted and that the spotters are at fault for not noticing. We feel “safe” because we can blame someone after. Klebold teaches us, with grace and generosity, that we are not safe, that there is no predicting, or that the “predicting” we are doing is not working. I admire her for this work. All proceeds from the book are going to advance mental health awareness. In the world of school-shootings literature, this is required reading.