Step by Step

Sheree Haughian is an elementary-school teacher-librarian with the
Dufferin County Board of Education.

Kim Jamieson and her mother had the kind of relationship many might
envy. When her mom is killed by a drunken driver during the Christmas
holidays, Kim enters the robotic world of the bereaved. Three months
later, her life still in tatters, Kim longs to talk about her loss with
her policeman father, but he is too busy to confront his own personal
misfortunes. Soon Kim strikes up relationships with a boy who freelances
for the local paper and her mother’s recently widowed dearest friend.
The pair helps to bring her back from the hollow land to a place where
she can remember her mother without numbness or pain.

The grieving process, as the title suggests, is step by step; there are
no quick fixes, no easy overnight cures. Young adults, however,
generally demand a bit of snap to their plotlines; this novel obliges by
a operating on a time frame more telescoped than human psychology would
prescribe. Nonetheless, the story accurately captures the rollercoaster
experience of losing a parent. Step By Step offers a kind of comfort to
those who are grieving, and insights to those who are not. Recommended.