A Mother's Reckoning

By Sue Klebold

Rated 4 Stars

Kindle Format

This is one of the saddest books I've ever read.  It's been more than seventeen years since this tragedy and when I saw that Sue Klebold had written a book I bought it hoping to read that the parents of the young men who had perpetrated this terrible crime had been able to put their lives back together and move on.  

Sue Klebold's book is a well written, heartbreakingly honest and introspective account of the step by step process of she and her husband went through in attempting deal with the horrible reality that their  son had viciously killed others and then himself  

I don't think anyone will ever really know why those boys did what they did.  I just feel so very sorry for everyone whose lives they destroyed or damaged.

Publisher's Summary

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 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. 

For the last 16 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 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.

Death Clouds on Mt. Baldy

By:  Cathy Hufault
Rated 5 Stars
Non-fiction
Kindle Format


This book recounts a tragic hike by a group of six Boy Scouts gone tragically wrong.  The author Cathy Hufault, sister of one of the surviving scouts, authored this comprehensive account of those 19 days in the fall of 1958, following a record-breaking blizzard that came out of nowhere and took the young adventurers by surprise.

I was living at Ft. Huachuca, AZ when this happened and I remember it very well.  Hundreds of people turned out to search in terrible weather conditions to try to find these boys. It broke everyone's heart when it became apparent that the outcome was not going to be a good one.

Links:

Trailer for book on youtube

mp3 Exploring the story behind the deaths of three Boy Scouts near Tucson in 1958

Book Description:

This haunting historical adventure drama relays harrowing accounts of rescue, survival, bravery and tragic loss. It was the largest search and rescue operation in Arizona history. On November 15,1958 an unpredicted record breaking arctic-like blizzard roars out of nowhere across the mild desert terrain of southern Arizona. Three little boys are feared caught out in the open, perhaps buried under the three to seven feet of snowfall in the mountains. Cowboys ram through snow up to their horses’ necks, hikers push through monster snowdrifts, and helicopters hover at dangerous altitudes in their struggle to find the boys before they die. Re-live the courage, true-grit and anguish on the trail.