I do NOT hold Sue Klebold responsible for Dylan's suicide or for his choice to murder. She lets us know that he was no 'Eric Harris.' I will say this, loud and clear, no one, NO ONE should be held responsible for ANYONE's suicide or should they murder anyone else. It is a powerful moment, indeed, when she and her family watch the tapes and realize that Dylan actually gleefully killed others, but even then, she goes to great lengths to let the listeners know that many were saved because he let some people run away. When she strays from that, however, she she goes on, for hours on end, for example, about how she initially believes Dylan was duped, she's exasperating. That's easily forgotten, and when she writes of her grief as a mother, that rings true, loud and clear.

What Sue does best in this book is remind the world that she lost a son too at the tragedy at Columbine. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. Includes a PDF of acknowledgments and resources from the book.Īll author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues. And with fresh wounds from the recent Newtown and Charleston shootings, never has the need for understanding been more urgent. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and countless interviews with mental health experts.įilled with hard-won wisdom and compassion, A Mother's Reckoning is a powerful and haunting book that sheds light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. In A Mother's Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently? Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives.įor the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold