Bull's Eye.

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher and librarian in Winnipeg.

Seventeen-year-old Emily Bell’s acceptance of a package addressed to her mom, Sandra, changes her comfortable life dramatically. Sandra has been stressed since returning from Toronto with the ashes of her younger sister, Donna, whose risky behaviour culminated in suicide. Sandra knows the package contains information that reveals Donna to be Emily’s birth mother. What Emily sees as betrayal by Sandra, her “un-mom,” prompts her to head to Vancouver, stay at the YWCA (paid for by Mom), meet another troubled teen, revisit Donna’s high school, uncover information from a former teacher, learn her birth father owns the Bull’s Eye, and visit the bar only to learn her father recently died and his son runs the Bull’s Eye.

When Emily realizes she cannot afford to stay in Vancouver, she returns to Victoria and her “un-mom.” Unable to forgive and forget, Emily embarks on her own dangerous behaviour until her vandalism lands her in legal difficulty and she must publicly apologize to the student body. Counselling, performing community service, and maturing help Emily accept that, although her biological parents are dead, Sandra really is her mother; love, not biology, binds them together.

Bull’s Eye introduces a bright and appealing protagonist whose first-person, present-tense account of her experiences should resonate with reluctant readers. Well-paced action and straightforward language combine to present a story that manages to incorporate many current “issues” in one slim volume, but the central theme revolves around the honesty and strength of the mother/aunt-daughter relationship. Recommended.