Safe by Susan Shaw

This is the story of a girl who has just finished the 7th grade. She lost her mother at a very young age and on the last day of 7th grade she loses innocence and herself - she is raped, beaten and dumped for dead. The story takes the reader through the summer and her initial shock and denial of what has happened. Tracy and her father must deal with the police, their own feelings and the reactions of others. Tracy rejects therapy and her best friends efforts to help her through her fears. Tracy returns to school in the fall and spends the year of finding a place to escape - her piano lessons and then through the music and the determination of her father and friends, a way to grieve and begin to return to normalcy. I found this to be a very powerful book. It is sensitive in its telling and realistic in the stages of grief and recovery. I give this a big YAY.