Author: Rosemarie Boll
Publisher: Second Story Press
ISBN: 9781897187722
Book source: review copy from publisher
From the jacket:
What do you do when your father becomes the enemy of your family?
Danny McMillan never knew that his father was abusing his mother until a night of violence shattered his family forever. Watching in the courtroom as his father is sentenced, Danny struggles with divided loyalties - to his mother on one side and to his father whom he wants to forgive on the other.
After one trial is over, another begins for Danny. Social services and the police convince Danny's mother that they must go into a victim protection program. Danny is asked to leave everything behind - his home, his friends, and the love and support of his grandparents. In a new city and attending a new school, Danny is even given a new name - David Mayer. But who is David? He is someone that Danny does not want to be, living a life he cannot accept. As David, he is pushing boundaries he never would have pushed.
If the normal rules no longer apply, why not break them?
This book is an eye opener. As someone with no direct experience of domestic violence - someone who's never even had a friend affected by it - I had no idea how the Canadian justice system responds to it. Rosemarie Boll knows. She's a lawyer, with over 20 years' experience in family law. As I read The Second Trial, I knew with absolute certainty that the author was portraying truth - a horrible, messy, devastating truth that affects far too many families. In this, her first novel, Boll demonstrates that abuse continues to impact families, long after the abuse itself has stopped.
Much of this impact is revealed through the complex dynamics within Danny's family. Danny loves his mother, but adores his dad. After all, Dad bought him a dog. Dad takes him fishing. Once, Dad took Danny's whole class on the best field trip there's ever been. So what if Danny's sister wasn't invited on any of these trips? It's not like Jennifer wants to catch fish anyway. And maybe it's been a while since they've seen mom's parents at Christmas, but holidays are more fun with just the family anyway.
Danny can't deny that Mom fell down the stairs - Danny found her, and Danny called 911. If Mom says Dad pushed her, it must be true, because Mom wouldn't lie. But it was just a mistake. Dad says he loves her and that it would never happen again. He swore in court. So why can't things just go back to the way they were?
When I was in my late 20s, I read Catcher in the Rye for the first time. Teens all over the world adore this book, which is why I was so astonished by how much I hated it. On reflection, I realized why - I was simply too old to share Holden Caulfield's point of view. The Second Trial is the only other young adult book I've felt too old for. I understood on an intellectual level why Danny wanted so hard to believe that his family would get back together and be happy again. But at the gut level, I just couldn't relate to him. Even worse, I found myself responding to his series of increasingly risky decisions with irritation, rather than empathy. For example, there are several points in the novel when Danny questions his perception of reality, considers the fact that his mother and sister may be telling more truth than Dad ever did, vows to change his own behaviour, and promptly forgets all about it.
That being said, the dark corner of my mind that remembers what it was like to be thirteen suspects my response to this book would have been completely different twenty years ago, and that Boll may know exactly what her target audience is thinking. For that reason, and because the subject of the novel is important in and of itself, I recommend this book to kids twelve and up.
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For more information on Rosemarie Boll and Canadian family law, visit her website.
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