A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of the Columbine Tragedy By: Sue Klebold
A Mother’s Reckoning is told by Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the shooters in the Columbine massacre. Sue gives a brutally honest account from the time she received the phone call from her husband that there was an actual emergency; all the way to the heart-wrenching discovery of her son’s desire to die. Throughout the book, she never makes excuses for Dylan’s monstrous actions, but tries to understand the question, “why?” Sue consults many mental health experts, whom she refers to as “brain health” experts. She wanted to stress the point that what goes on during “brain illness” is a tangible thing. The book is a about her struggle to make sense of what happened and why, but it also opens up a larger issue of what we are facing as a country, that is, the state of mental health for our teens, suicides and violence in our culture. Sue desires the reader to look closely at our own loved ones to try to detect early signs to prevent another devastating tragedy.
