(A Dealing with Death and Dying / Loss of Loved One YA Novel) Millie Jackson loves the freedom of running through the wooded mountains of wild and beautiful West Virginia. It sure beats going home to the strict mother who reins over her home. She has her two cousins, Josh and Aaron for company. And she can avoid Old Man Taylor, who scares her a little with his daily treks up a steep mountain to visit the grave of his wife.
When Josh is killed in a car accident, Millie has a hard time accepting his death. At first she refuses to believe he is dead. It is surely a horrible mistake. But the cold, harsh reality starts to sink in and she realizes that he is truly gone forever. She never told him how much she loved him.
As Millie defies her parents and takes daily treks to the grave, she becomes further involved with Renee, who begins urging her to try some drugs that will "make her feel better."
Will Millie make the right choice that honors Josh's memory? Or, will she spiral down until there is no return?
T.A. Peters on Amazon wrote:As we look back to when we were twelve, the same age as Millie Jackson, the protagonist in Ms. Soard’s book, how many of us can remember the difficulties we had coming of age. But I wonder how many of us had to endure the kind of family environment she had to face on any given day, a strict mother who rule the roost without a single item getting under her radar.
Luckily Millie has two best friends, her two cousins Aaron and Josh, as her company. To away from her daily miserable environment, Millie loves to wander into the wooded mountainous area around her home. The only thing she really needs to keep mindful of is not running into creepy old man Taylor who frightens her slightly each time she sees him on one of his daily hikes to his wife’s grave.
Everything is essentially fine with Millie until the day a tragedy hits her like a brick when the car Aaron’s driving gets involved in a horrific accident and kills Josh. Just like when we hear that one of our loved ones has been suddenly taken away us, we’re in a state of total disbelief; she wants it to be a horrific mistake or merely a bad dream as well.
While Millie is too young to do what we as adults sometimes resort in doing, like getting drunk to make us feel better, she is getting tempted by Renee, who she’s getting increasing involved with, into using drugs to get the same result. The question is which path will Millie ultimately decide to take.
I loved the author’s true to life approach to this story, an approach which didn’t appear to be overly self-righteous. The fact that Millie was able to rise above the adversities she had to face and to honor the memory of her cousin Josh’s life is something which should pull at the heartstrings of the adults reading this book, like me. This book can also be used to show readers in the target audience for this book that they need to put any event like the one Millie had to face behind them, so they can move on with their lives unabated, which is why I’ve decided to give Ms. Soard 5 STARS for this endeavor.
In Fayette County, West Virginia, Millie Jackson lives the typical life of a twelve-year-old girl alternating romps through the forest in the company of her eleven and sixteen-year-old cousins Josh and Aaron with the daily chore of navigating the social waters of the local junior high school. There’s even a creepy old man in her neck of the woods for the children to satirize with tales of graveyard visits and human flesh eating. But the idylls of childhood must be swept aside when Aaron wrecks his car resulting in Josh’s death, and Millie must learn to deal with his passing without letting the loss of her cousin and best-friend hold her back from living her own life to the fullest.
Lori Soard’s It’s Hard to Go Home is appropriately written for a young teen audience, but in offering an earnest account of dealing with the loss of a loved one, the author has created a story that could just as easily touch the adult heart. Honest and direct without being preachy, one of the most redeeming features of the protagonist is in the fact that Millie bears only a manageable malice when dealing with her new social reality following Josh’s death. The cigarette-smoking, wild-party-throwing Renee ultimately could have easily been cast off as an unsuitably bad influence destined for prison or worse, but Millie shows a good deal of maturity in understanding that Renee is just as human as Claire, the quintessential cheerleader of perfect popularity. In discovering the humanity of those still living, including the emotional thrummings of her own family and the creepy old man, Millie is able to expand her universe past the one she lost, seemingly with enough spirit to include every soul she encounters.