My fourth novel, WRECK, was published in April 2019 by Skyhorse Publishing. If you’d like to read the Kirkus review, it’s here; the School Library Journal review is on Amazon; the Minneapolis StarTribune review used to be and may still be (scroll down) here; and the Duluth News Tribune review is here. So grateful to have these positive reviews!
The elevator pitch: a 17-year-old girl has to help her father both live and die with ALS.
This book is a father-daughter story, more than anything else. I wrote it to give a story line to all the sadness and love I’ve felt since my own father died in 2011. Layered on top is some anticipatory grief I have about a family member with a degenerative illness. It’s also a book about choice, and how we each get to choose what to do with our lives.
If you want to know what I think about kids making big choices, including helping a parent in such a tough situation, look here.
If you want to know how the book came to be, look here.
Here’s the catalog copy.
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Sometimes loss has its own timetable.
Set on the shores of Lake Superior, WRECK follows high school junior Tobin Oliver as she navigates her father’s diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Steve’s life as a paramedic and a runner comes to an abrupt halt just as Tobin is preparing her application for a scholarship to art school. With the help of Steve’s personal care assistant (and family friend) Ike, Tobin attends to both her photography and to Steve as his brain unexpectedly fails right along with his body. Tobin struggles to find a “normal” life, especially as Steve makes choices about the end of his own, and though she fights hard, Tobin comes to realize that respecting his decision is the ultimate act of love.
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This book was so, so, so hard to write. But I’m proud of it. While I was writing, I sat with three Lake Superior agates on my computer–one for Tobin, one for Steve, and one for Ike. I hope the book conveys both the difficulty and importance of loving someone, and the constancy of love as a whole. It’s been a quiet book thus far, but those who have read it have loved it, despite its sadness. I’m grateful it’s out there and doing its work.
