Kate

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Sherrard, author of the Shelby Belgarden mystery series, switches genres
with Kate, the fictional story of the final few weeks in the life of
14-year-old Kate Benchworth, who, in 1962, is dying from an inoperable
cancerous brain tumour. Kate tells her own story, commencing with the
news that the perpetrators of a robbery at the local garage in her
sleepy little community have been caught and are being housed in the
town’s makeshift jail. Because feeding these criminals becomes the
responsibility of the local women, a curious Kate volunteers to take her
mother’s thrice-weekly contributions to the jail, where she meets
Randy Nichols, the younger of the two teen robbers. Over the novel’s
course, a romance develops between the two, but Kate does not reveal her
illness to Randy until after he asks her to be his girlfriend.

Writing about a dying teenager, especially from that individual’s
point of view, can be challenging, but Sherrard never lets the story
become maudlin—though Kate, her younger brother, Mark, and her
parents, Orville and Lillian, all appropriately have their sad moments.
Sherrard also re-creates the life within a small East Coast community in
the 1960s, including some of its “characters,” while developing a
subplot involving Maryanne Richards, whose self-imposed life as a
recluse has been the subject of much community gossip. Despite being a
typical egocentric adolescent, Kate learns much about not judging people
from first impressions. Young adults and fans of Lurlene McDaniel’s
One Last Wish series will enjoy Kate’s more developed storyline.
Recommended.