Right Behind You by Gail Giles
Not a murder mystery, this novel takes you into the life of a young man who, as a nine-year-old accidentally kills a neighbor boy. Only no one thinks it was accidental, even the boy himself. The story is told as his written confession to a new potential friend, as he tries to make a new start at life years later, in his third “home state” and another failed try.
He emerged from his catatonia into years of therapy, trying to come to terms with his anger, his guilt and his shame. Anger at his father, who left him with a pail of gasoline and a lighter, and who he blames for his mother’s death from cancer, and for the fact that he is growing up in the Alaskan wilderness. He is angry at himself, angry at the therapist, the orderlies, the nurses, and his fellow Loon Platoon members, as the staff and the residents call themselves. When he finally begins to talk, his first words to his therapist are “Wily Coyote” – and it eventually comes out that when he burned the neighbor child, he didn’t consider that the kid would be burned as well as the baseball glove he was flaunting. He had remembered Wile E. holding a bomb that blew up, and he just gets scorched and is back and fine in the next scene.
How he deals with his own anger, learns what others have done to help him, and tries to fit in in the world make a compelling story. My only quibble is that his new friend’s own problems seem almost too simple – she became an alcoholic after her first beer-soaked kiss – but other than that simplification, it is a great story of second and thirds chances, and figuring out how to handle what life sometimes brings.
A good book, but if you think all of life comes in terms of black and white with no shades of gray, this might not be the book for you.