Prefaced to this book is the following;

‘On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold armed themselves with guns and explosives and walked into Columbine High School. They killed twelve students and a teacher, before taking their own lives. It was the worst school shooting in history.

Dylan Klebold was my son.’

This book is one mother’s dedication to trying to comprehend the one of the most terrible of tragedies and horrors. It was something that doesn’t even occur to a parent, a nightmare different to the more common.

When a mother prays her son to be dead, not safe and alive— it is in this bleakness that we observe the horror that he is.

This book follows Dylan’s mothers thoughts as she makes sense of Dylan’s death by suicide and the violence of the massacre only moments before it.

First comes her son, second his crime, third the public’s perception, fourth the agony.

From Sue Klebold’s Journal entry, dated April 1999

‘The terror and total disbelief are overwhelming. The sorrow of losing my son, the shame of what he has done, the fear of the world’s hatred. There is no respite from the agony.’

‘To the rest of the world, Dylan was a monster; but I had lost a child.’

‘Our failure to speak up in our own defense made people believe we were hiding secrets.’

This was a book written with vulnerability and care: I felt it was heart wrenching and painful. I sympathised with Sue Klebold and felt her circumstances were wholly unfair. She was judged for her son’s crime, as his mother she was blamed. It was the most upsetting situation- she had no idea how he could have done something so horrific and lost her son twice over. After his crime, she no longer knew her boy.