amazon review of blue diary:-
Alice Hoffman's Blue Diary is a gripping tale of good and evil, of ordinary families whose lives are wrenched apart by death. It questions whether you can ever really know anyone, even members of your immediate family you have known all your life, and whether you would be able to find it in your heart to forgive someone you love and respect when they are accused of a crime so terrible that it smashes your whole world to pieces.
Jorie and Ethan Ford are a golden couple blessed with an 11-year-old son, Collie, living a decent, quiet life in small-town Massachusetts. Ethan is a pillar of the community--a handsome, good man, whose life revolves around his family, his work as a carpenter and his roles as volunteer fireman and Little League coach. Since he first walked into her home-town, her life and her bed 13 years before, Jorie has never lost the feeling that she is special, singled out by fate to live a charmed life with a man she still desires and a son she adores. And then, on a glorious Monday morning in June, Jorie's fate turns and her life as she knows it is changed. One wonders whether the hand of fate will offer her any kind of salvation and if she can come to terms with the unimaginable.
Kat Williams, Collie's next-door neighbour and best friend is mature beyond her years. In her short life, she has had to cope with the loss of her father, a distant mother and a sister who attracts, and dispenses with, boyfriends as flies to a light, but who has taken to self-mutilation to heal her numbness. Is Kat the only one who can instinctively feel when something, or someone, is wrong? Charlotte, Jorie's best friend since childhood, knows when something is amiss, but her own terrible losses and lack of self-worth cause her to mistrust her feelings and internalise blame.
In the pages of this (relatively) short novel, Ms Hoffman manages to cover the singular emotions involved in so many different relationshipsfrom parental, marital, sibling, friendship and even criminal-victim. The writing demonstrates enormous intelligence and endless compassion, an ability to cut through the sharp edges of humanity and look deep into a person's soul. In spite of its dark, disturbing theme, Blue Diary is an inspiring story of the enduring spirit of human love. Carey Green This text refers to the Paperback edition.