So Far Away by Meg Mitchell Moore — 336 pgs

Natalie Gallagher is only thirteen and dealing with an emotional load that no one should ever have to carry. After her parents’ bitter divorce, Natalie is basically left to fend for herself as she lives with her severely depressed mother. Natalie’s mother has checked out and is rarely ever outside her bedroom, spending all her time sleeping instead of caring for her daughter. When Natalie begins to receive threatening text messages from two girls at school, one of them her former best friend, she becomes increasingly anguished. Soon the venomous texts are coming fast and furious. When she decides to tackle an independent school project in the Massachusetts archives to distract herself, she’s quickly befriended by the senior archivist, Kathleen Lynch. Though Kathleen doesn’t know about the secrets that Natalie has been hiding, she immediately senses that something is wrong with the young girl she’s working with. Kathleen has her own secrets: many years ago, her daughter became a heroin addict and left home after a terrible confrontation, and Kathleen has been searching for her ever since. As the cyberbullying becomes more and more vicious, Kathleen realizes that this young girl is in danger, and that only she can do something to stop it. In the process of helping Natalie, the two stumble across an old diary that may hold clues to the lonely Natalie’s heritage, and Kathleen and her co-worker Neil are just the two to ferret them out. But Natalie is slipping away from Kathleen just as her daughter did so many years before. Can Kathleen rescue this tormented girl, not only from her enemies but from herself, before it’s too late? In this breathtaking novel, Meg Mitchell Moore searingly explores the issue of cyberbullying and ingeniously interweaves the diary of an young Irish immigrant, a young girl who also found herself in difficult conundrum many decades before.

This book was hard to tear myself away from. Its sincere tone and frightening story struck me so deeply that I had to put it down midway and go speak to my daughter about cyberbullying. Natalie’s plight was hair-raising, and the fact that no one took her seriously until it was too late disturbed me greatly. There’s something heartrending about reading a book in which the main character is being bullied unceasingly with nowhere to turn. I was so angry at Natalie’s parents for forcing her to fend for herself at such a tender age. This left Natalie in the wind, fighting for her pride and reputation, alone.

When Natalie unearths a strange diary in the basement of her home, she decides that she’ll uncover its secrets as her independent project for English class. But before she even opens the diary, she meets the lonely and very perceptive Kathleen Lynch. In revealing even the smallest part of her soul to Kathleen, Natalie and her diary become a subject of intense interest to the archivist. Kathleen is longing for the daughter that left her many years ago, and when she discovers the truth behind Natalie’s reticence and fear, she resolves to save the child at all costs. There’s an instant bond between the two, but Natalie is skittish and won’t reveal everything to the woman who longs to be the hero to one lost girl.

Though Natalie is initially confused by the bullying, things get way out of hand in a very short time. There’s nowhere to hide, and Natalie is powerless against the two girls who have targeted her. Again and again she tells her story, but the people who should save the day are hearing but not listening. This was maddening to me. The suffering of a young girl with nowhere to turn immediately made me think of all the children out there being bullied, secretly carrying this great weight of shame and abuse. The major crux of this story lies in the themes of trust. It’s because Natalie can’t fully trust Kathleen that things go horribly wrong for her. There is a great amount of gravity and tension in this story, and most of it centers around a victim’s sense of shame and humiliation.

The final element to this story is the inclusion of the secret diary, written by an Irish maid in the 1900s. This is the life story of Bridget O’Connell, and the tragic and scandalous events that changed her life. Moore entwines this story with precision, making it not only a source of mystery and suspense in the narrative, but also the figurative glue that bonds Kathleen and Natalie together. Like the main narrative, it’s also a cautionary tale, and left me greedily gulping the pages to find out what eventually happened to Bridget. It’s a story within a story, and gifts the reader with a lot to think about and discuss.

This is a book that every parent needs to read. Not only is the narrative thoroughly addictive, the messages within are hugely important and relevant. Once I picked this book up, there was no stopping me until I had turned the final page and discovered the fate of the characters who were not only lifelike, but tenderly endearing. An important book that will hold you in its spell until you turn the final page. Highly recommended.

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This book was provided as a complimentary review copy.