Donny Bailey Seagraves

Eleven Year Old Daniel would do anything to please his favorite uncle, Clay. That is why he has agreed to go hunting with him. Clay is the man he has looked up to. His father has been a changed man ever since the accident that killed Daniel’s grandparents and left his father with permanent injuries. He has seen his father turn into a cigarette smoking, beer guzzling, mean man. He seems to be angry all of the time. Daniel tries his hardest to avoid him. He does this by spending time with his Uncle Clay. It is one of those quiet mornings when Clay and Daniel go hunting. Clay is excited to share his passion with his nephew. When the opportunity comes to kill his first rabbit, Daniel just can’t take the shot. As he leans on his gun to stand up he forgets that his finger is on the trigger and his gun fires killing his uncle. This is a story of forgiveness, the hardest kind, learning to forgive yourself. Daniel starts the healing process and along the way finds that his father isn’t as bad as he thought.
I am always telling my students to look for connections to what they read. I remember my cousin coming to live with us to finish out high school after a similar accident. His father had found an old hand gun buried in his back yard. My cousin and his friends were looking at it. They had each taken a turn of pointing the gun at each other and going, “bang, bang”. When it was my cousin’s turn to handle the gun the bullet that had been lodged for years found the chamber and fired killing his best friend. The young teen died on his way to the hospital. His father was a police officer and tried to assure my cousin that it could be him that was dead. They held no hard feelings. It has been 40 years and it still haunts him. He has never married, he is an alcoholic and still makes the statement that he wishes he was the one that had died that day. I had one other connection to this story. Two seniors in my class one the president of our Girls Athletic Club was accidently shot the day her boyfriend had proposed to her. He and a friend had come in from hunting and set their guns against the couch. She ran to him knocking one of the guns against the coffee table where it discharged killing her instantly. He was unable to live with the accident and ended up in a mental institution. I don’t know if I would be able to deal with it. I am not sure if all of the counseling in the world would help or not. This was a great book. I know many of my students are familiar with guns as they deal with gangs and gang activity every day. Maybe by reading this just one of them will see how dangerous gun safety is.… (mais)