Americans in Space by Mary E. Mitchell

Summary from GoodReads:

Life is a challenge for 36-year-old Kate Cavanaugh, high school guidance counselor to a motley group of at-risk students. Two years after finding her young husband dead in bed beside her, Kate’s storybook life has vanished, and she and her two children are still reeling. Her daughter Charlotte, once a sweet girl, has morphed into an angry, tattooed, tongue-studded teen; and Hunter, Kate’s four-year-old, keeps his feelings sealed tight inside and an empty ketchup bottle clasped to his heart. When a tragedy occurs at the Alan B. Shepard High School, it’s Kate who finds herself in need of counsel and guidance. What she does next catapults her and her family down an unfamiliar road, on a trajectory into space—toward understanding, forgiveness and healing.

My Review:

I have had Americans in Space on my TBR pile for over two years now. When culling through some of my selections from that time I decided, on a whim, to keep this one because the title fascinated me. No other reason- I just liked the title. So, when picking books for a TBR yearly challenge for the blog I put this one on the list – again, because I liked the name.

I’ve read quite a few books on loss and grief and recovery. I consider myself to be a fairly good judge of when a book is getting it right, because I get this feeling in my gut – you know, the one that feels like you’ve just been kicked? Well.. my gut is bruised from reading this book.

I don’t know which characters story affected me more, but I’m telling you right now: mother-daughter tension – check; mother-son confusion – check. This book has just about everything, from dependencies to rebellion to recovery and learning to live life again.

So what kept me from making it one of my all-time favorite books? My issue isn’t with the characters, the writing, or the story – it’s that the book was released with several glaring issues in editing. There are words that… well aren’t words, and phrases that don’t end correctly. I found one sentence that looked like it stopped mid-sentence and another latter half of a different sentence was pieced on to its end. That made me feel discouraged – that these things could crop up and mar my enjoyment. And frankly, for a professional book (Editor and all) they should not have been there.

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