The Clinton County Reads Steering Committee has announced the results of voting and the county’s choice for Clinton County Reads 2018: “A Mother’s Reckoning,” by Sue Klebold, a New York Times bestseller by the mother of one of the Columbine shooters, about living in the aftermath of Columbine.
Clinton County Reads’ month-long, county-wide reading program starts in early March and culminates with an April 11 dinner at the General Denver.
A devastating memoir that might smash all preconceived beliefs about the family of a mass murderer, “A Mother’s Reckoning” is a raw and honest book about a mother who has tried to make sense of an unthinkable tragedy while reminding readers that there are different, complicated perspectives on terrible events, no matter how barbaric.
“Reading this book as a critic is hard; reading it as a parent is devastating,” wrote Carlos Lozado in the Washington Post. “I imagine snippets of my own young children in Dylan Klebold, shades of my parenting in Sue and Tom. I suspect that many families will find their own parallels. This book’s insights are painful and necessary and its contradictions inevitable.”
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School near 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 18 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?
A review from People magazine says: “At times her story is so chilling you want to turn away, but Klebold’s compassion and honesty — and realization that parents and institutions must work to discover kids’ hidden suffering — will keep you riveted.”
The Clinton County Reads steering committee selects titles for the ballot based on literary merit and themes that lend themselves to programming and conversation throughout Clinton County. The committee times the announcement to allow ample opportunity to read the selection prior to the Clinton County Reads events in the spring.
Past Clinton County Reads choices are:
2017: “Girl Waits With Gun,” by Amy Stewart
2016: “Everything I Never Told You,” by Celeste Ng
2015: “Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand
2014: “A Walk in the Woods,” by Bill Bryson
2013: “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter,” by Tom Franklin
2012: “The Book Thief,” by Markus Zusak
2011: “Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
2010: “The Kindness of Strangers,” by Katrina Kittle
2009: “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” by Barbara Kingsolver
2008: “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” by Tracy Kidder
2007: “March,” by Geraldine Brooks
2006: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee
Clinton County Reads is sponsored by the Blanchester Public Library, the Sabina Public Library and its New Vienna branch, the Wilmington Public Library and its Clinton-Massie branch, and BooksNMore.org. Copies of “A Mother’s Reckoning” are available at each library location.
All author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues.
Serving on the Clinton County Reads 2018 steering committee are chairwoman Nancy Ehas, Eileen Brady, Joy Brubaker, Peggy Dunn, Chris Owens, Bonnie Starcher, Marla Stewart, and Mary Thomas Watts.
