This is an interesting book by the parents of one of the first victims of the Columbine shooters. The parents do not want to portray Rachel Scott as a saintly religious cliché or as a sheer victim of a violent tragedy. Apparently the shooters had made videos of themselves as vigilante heroes taking revenge by shooting students at school. These videos were part of a school project and therefore seen by the teachers and students at the school. In one of their last videos before the shooting they named Rachel as one of their targets, apparently due to her Christian faith. Rachel had a very deep spiritual life and saw herself as struggling to make sense of her world as an adolescent who had doubts, not about God, but what type of attitude she should embrace as a Christian woman of faith. Part of the purpose of the book is for the parents to work through their grief issues and that is very evident as the book seems to be structured as the talks they gave to different groups over the years since Columbine. No one ever “gets over” losing their child. No one ever “gets over” losing a loved one. You just survive and learn to manage the feelings you have when grief and sorrow return to your already wounded heart. So Rachel worked at Subway after school and then had a regular church youth group that she attended after that. She was a really good girl. There was another tragedy the parents speak about after the Columbine shooting that is eerie. The Subway shop where Rachel worked was robbed and two workers were killed. The mother says that Rachel would have been working at Subway that day had she not been early killed. There is a sense of fatalism present in this expression by the parents and that itself is a form of dealing with the trauma of losing a child. It’s not logically a necessary fact that Rachel’s death was ultimately inevitable. I understand this type of thinking but it is harmful for a parent to entertain or harbor such thoughts. It turns God into the origin and cause of evil in the world, which he is not. Evil in the world is a mystery which is only answered by Christ’s own death and Resurrection. Letting parents verbalize and “vent” these feelings is necessary but always incomplete. This book was really powerful not because the parents wrote something outstanding but because they use some of Rachel’s own diary entries to show how powerful her belief was even when she had serious doubts about what God wanted her to do with her life.
The book talks about the other student who was shot with Rachel, Richard Castaldo. Castaldo originally said that there were words between Eric Harris with Scott defending her faith. He has apparently, since then, retracted that account of the day. Having worked with trauma victims I know that not everything said is accurate when the story can be checked by other evidence. But usually the first account of what happened to them, not the whole account, is the most-true account of what they’re experienced. This is because it involves their own point of view and not the whole chain of events. Someone may have actually convinced him after-the-fact that his actual recollections never happened, and he being traumatized, settled with another version, for whatever reason. I still believe Castaldo’s first version as Scott was named in one of the videos as a possible target for her religious belief, she was one of the first killed and she was hit in the head among other places by Eric Harris. Rachel Scott was a beautiful person inside and out and I'm happy to have happened upon this book about her faith experience and tragic death.

It is based upon her christan view of life. I cried through most of it. ( )

This book was very touching. The story of Rachel Joy Scott, a student who was killed during the Columbine tragedy in April of 1999, is one that is filled with a strong faith in Jesus and God.

Through the journals that Rachel kept, as a way to communicate with God, we are shown her personal struggles that come with living her faith on a daily basis. But the journals Rachel kept are not the only parts to this book. Rachel's parents Beth and Darrell take turns throughout the book talking about certain aspects of their lives before, during and after the tragedy. Their takes on the killer's lives, and the understanding that their daughter had with God.

I found myself crying at so many points throughout this book. Rachel seemed to be a truly caring person, the kind of person that everyone wants to have in their lives. It is a shame that she was taken so early, but in her short life she seemed to have touched so many lives.

While I did enjoy this book I think that toward the end it became somewhat redundant in that Rachel's parents seem to share the same kinds of tidbits about their lives with Rachel. I do not fault them for this, as I can not imagine the task of writing about the loss of a child let alone losing a child so young. But I am glad that they choose to share this story and I hope that through this reading people can find faith and hope. ( )