"A Mother's Reckoning" by Sue Klebold

Genre: Memoir
Format: E-Book
Publication: February 2016
Cover Rating: 5/5 Stars

From Goodreads: On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives.

For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently?

These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.

Filled with hard-won wisdom and compassion, A Mother’s Reckoning is a powerful and haunting book that sheds light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. And with fresh wounds from the recent Newtown and Charleston shootings, never has the need for understanding been more urgent.

All author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues.

My Thoughts: This is a tough review to write. There's so much I want to say and touch on, but I'm not sure how to put it in a way that someone could understand my feelings without reading the book themselves.

I've always been interested in the Columbine Shooting. It was the first major news event that I can remember seeing, and the first one that actually mattered to me since I was just starting middle school. The news coverage on it was extensive causing the boys who did it to become legends in a way. Off and on I've ran across articles on the shooting throughout the years, but it wasn't until I read Dave Cullen's novel Columbine (original review found here), that I really had some inkling of what happened. What's more, it made me question everything I thought I knew about the murderers and how the media portrayed them- they were goths, they were loners, they were bullied, etc. When the truth is so much more complex than that. After reading Dave's novel and the journal entries the boys wrote, I quickly came to the realization that Dylan Kelbold was not who the media portrayed him to be and that he had a mental illness. That may have been obvious to everyone else, and to a degree I knew that before I read Dave's book... but I don't think I realized that when you stripped away all the other possible "reasons" the boys did what they did you're left with the fact that Dylan was mentally sick.

This is where Sue's book picks up. I feel like this book was her way of saying "Here's what kind of parent I was. I was just like you. I did everything I was supposed to do and I still missed the signs." And I believe her. Sue's book isn't just about her relationship with Dylan, his life or the shooting. It goes deeper than that. It's an in depth look into life after someone you love commits suicide. Of course, in Sue's case it's much worse than that since Dylan's was a murder/suicide.

I was left with so much respect for Sue Klebold after reading this. The way she wrote this book, as a mother who loved her son but also as an apology to all of his victims... it was simply heartbreaking to be put in her shoes. But as I said before, this isn't just about Dylan. This book serves as a reminder to parents everywhere that this can happen to you. The Klebolds were a normal family. The signs of Dylan's depression (when they were there) were subtle and nothing you wouldn't chalk up to being a teenager. It was truly eye opening and it definitely changed some of my views on how I will be parenting my own daughter when she gets to be older.

The bottom line is, I would recommend this book to every parent. I would also recommend that you read Columbine first as it goes into much more detail as to what happened and gives a broader understanding of the event.

My Rating: 5/5 Stars