Poor Deer

For some reason I got this from the library thinking this was a children's book which it definitely is not. It's disturbing, grim, but it was well written. It's about a young girl whose friend dies in a cooler when she is four. The relationship with her mother worsens as her mother more or less blames the girl Margaret for it. (The mother's love interest turned on her with the death of the young girl. That is just one of the many reasons.) The real problem is Margaret trying to rationalze it. She does this with a mythical creature a poor deer that talks to her who is more or less a bully. This carries into her teenaged years when she steals a car and goes on a journey to try to make sense of it all. What the author really got down was the rationalizing the girl has with religion, trying to make sense of it all. I've done it myself with some of the trauma of my life. It's not a light story but it was worth a read.