Safe

Safe, by Susan Shaw, is also in the Top Ten of the 2008 Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers list. This is a story about a thirteen-year-old girl named Tracy who is raped and beaten while walking home on the last day of school, June fifteenth. It is about how she deals with how that attack made her feel like she wasn't safe anymore. Even though she identified the rapist to the police and they arrested him and he actually confessed, she had a very hard time leaving her house that summer. She threw herself into practicing the piano and discovered that not only did it comfort her but she was really good at it. But she started pulling away from her friends because she thought they couldn't possibly like her anymore; they just pitied her. Eventually she works through those feelings, with some help from the right therapist, and learns how to feel safe and to trust people. I loved the relationship she had with her father, and was touched by the way she kept her mother close to her even though she had died ten years before. I read this book through tear-filled eyes, but I still loved it. This is the kind of book you don't just read, you devour. Her other book, The Boy from the Basement, was the same way.