Blind Faith

Wittlinger, Ellen. Blind Faith. New York: Simon Pulse, 2006.

Death and dying seem to be fairly common topics in young adult literature. It's as though authors everywhere have decided that teens do not have the skills to cope with death and dying and that these skills are best taught through novels that the teens may or may not check out of the library. 

Liz is coping with the loss of her grandmother, Bunny, and her mother's insistence that her Spiritualist church helps her to stay in contact with Bunny.  Enter Nathan and his little sister, who move in across the street from Liz so they can live with their grandmother while their mother is dying of leukemia. Liz and Nathan both question what they believe about God, about heaven, and about life and death as they wrestle with a slough of difficult emotions.

The plot in this story wasn't super interesting, even though I was intrigued to see how the author would choose to end everything.  The story is much more emotion-oriented than action-oriented.  The characters are believable enough, though, and I did find myself feeling sorry for the teens as they faced death a lot sooner than they likely would have chosen.