Author Cara Sue Achterberg explores how one mistake can change lives forever.
Mothers fear for our children’s safety and futures. Invincible kids have a hard time believing that one stupid, split-second decision can cascade. Sometimes, a single moment separates decision and disaster.
The 1996 film “Sleepers” has always fascinated and terrified me. In it, a group of boys play a silly prank that results in a man’s injury. They are sentenced to a detention facility where the guards abuse them, forever damaging their emotional stability. The ripple effect is far-reaching not only for the perpetrators and the victims but also their families. Fair or not, parents pay for the crimes of their children.
In her new novel, Blind Turn, Cara Sue Achterberg examines how one small but disastrous lapse in judgment creates devastating consequences.
Sixteen-year-old Jess Johnson’s life implodes after she hits a man while driving. Her resulting head injury prevents her from remembering the accident, but she can’t believe what the police — and her best friend, Sheila, who was in the passenger seat — are saying: that her phone distracted her. Jess has never texted while driving in her life.
The man she killed was the football coach at her high school, a hero in their East Texas town. Within a day, Jess morphs from a popular honor student to a girl receiving death threats. The brutal judgment of the community makes her want to die and causes alienation for her mother, Liz.
Read the rest of my review and interview at Washington Independent Review of Books.
