The Class of '57

One of my most favorite songs is this one.   If you have graduated from high school more than fifteen years ago, just put your own year in there for '57 and you will love it, too, for the line, "Things get complicated when you get past eighteen." is one that we all know is true.
Nora, the main character in Mister Death's Blue-eyed Girls, is from the class of '57 and most of the book is told from her perspective, regarding the events that took place the summer before her senior year.  On the last day of school in June, Nora's two friends, one a senior and the other a few years younger, are shot to death in the woods while walking to school.  The story is based on similar events in Mary Downing Hahn's own life.
I couldn't put this book down.  I loved every page.  I was horrified by the way in which the priest in this book acts, but I know that some priests do believe as this priest did, both back then, and today.   This is a great book for a discussion on theodicy.  I wish I could have been the pastor that Nora went to back then in the summer of '56.  I don't know if I would have helped, but I would have given her a very different take on the events of that summer, as I have a very different understanding of the cause of earthly suffering, given by the grace of God and the study of the Scriptures.
This book really takes you back in time.  I've yet to find a book by Hahn that I didn't love, even though this is quite different from her others.