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If you killed someone, accidentally, or purposefully, you’d remember it for the rest of your life. That’s what The Rest of Her Life (2007) revolves around. It’s the story of two women, a mother and daughter, Leigh and Kara. Kara is eighteen and about to graduate from high school. Leigh teaches school in their town in Danby, Texas. In a moment of distraction Kara runs over a girl in a crosswalk, Bethany.

Much of the book examines the complex relationship between mother and daughter and why they’ve each felt misunderstood by the other. This event brings that age-old conflict to the forefront. Leigh wants to help her daughter, but Kara was always closer with her father who is a professor at the local university. The story follows the aftermath of Bethany’s death, its effect on Kara’s family, the community, and certainly Bethany’s mother. Besides all this, Leigh deals with whacko parents who want to challenge her book selections for an Honors English course she teaches to eight graders and consoling her son Justin, who isn’t invited to a sleep-over that all the other seventh grade boys in town were invited.

Then, there are Leigh’s flashbacks. Readers learn that looks are deceiving. Just because she’s living the American Dream, the middle class ideal of home and children and good jobs, doesn’t mean that she was born into it. Leigh and her older sister Pam moved to a new town and new school every year. Leigh adapted to the constant lack of friends by keeping her nose in a book. Pam, the more attractive of the two, found boyfriends quickly.  Leigh examines the relationship she had with her mother and the reasons for their eventual estrangement.

I loved this book. It was such a lovely surprise. Mostly because I didn’t read the flyleaf. I saw it in bookstores while vacationing in Florida and didn’t buy it because I brought half a dozen books to read and that’s a lot of heavy books to tote across state lines. Naturally I sought it out at a library when I returned home. Fabulous writing, great storytelling. Flawed characters. It has it all. Moriarty wrote a perfectly wonderful book and I look forward to reading more of her work.