Wrecked

E. R. Frank is an amazing writer. AMERICA, LIFE IS FUNNY, and FRICTION all garnered praise and starred reviews. Now, with WRECKED, she demonstrates once more that she can write sensitively and honestly about dire circumstances, incredibly awful events, and everyday intolerable life. Anna is driving home from a party when she in involved in an accident. The accident kills her brother's girlfriend, Cameron, and injures both Anna and her best friend Ellen. It was truly an accident, but Anna feels that she is responsible for Cameron's death. Of course, there is more to the story, and Anna reveals it through her therapy, in her budding relationship with Seth, and in her concern for her friend Ellen's drinking. Anna and Jack and the others have to learn to negotiate life without Cameron but with the hole that she leaves in the fabric of their young lives. Life was somplicated enough before especially with a father who is a rageaholic control freak and a passive mother. Add the loss of someone important to the lives of Anna and Jack, and their situation seems even more hopeless. Frank proves once more that it is possible to have hope, that things can end not happily but hopefully. I will be curious to see teen reader reaction to this novel, particularly to the EMDR method used by Anna's therapist.