Author Description

A teenager named Todd Martin who was the biggest target of high school bullies Cassie Peterson and her three friends kills nine people, including Cassie's friends, and injures seven others at the local high school. Cassie survives, but now conscious and regretful of her role as one of his bullies that led to the mass shooting, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery that sets her on a new path in order to uncover how, when, and why she went astray in life to ultimately find forgiveness, not just in her own eyes, but also in the eyes of a community that blames her for the tragedy just as much as they blame the actual shooter. Cassie recognizes that she must confront her father's death when she was eleven and address her current strained relationship with her mother. To begin her journey, she drops out of the high school that partially blames her for the shooting. During the day, she leaves town to work in the city as an assistant to an investigative reporter named Kathy Kaufman only to return to her hometown and face the victims of her actions at night. Kathy is working on both a story of possible abuse in an elderly assisted living facility as well as a teenage victim of abuse named Rebecca Smith who has been hospitalized due to abuse by her father. Cassie begins the process of her personal journey that sets into motion a chain of events where the two stories Kathy is working on changes Cassie's life forever, and in the process, Cassie changes the life of Rebecca, a woman named Lilly Spencer who is a resident of the assisted living facility and also a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP) WWII veteran, and Kathy herself, all of whom help to guide Cassie's way towards the goal of reaching true absolution and redemption in the eyes of her community, her mother, and herself.