Stillwater Rising

Written by Steena Holmes

After losing her son in an elementary school shooting that devastates the tight-knit community of Stillwater Bay, Jennifer Crowne finds herself unable to settle back into her role of perfect stay-at-home mom and committee organizer. Meanwhile, her best friend, Mayor Charlotte Stone, struggles to keep the town together, and Charlotte’s husband, the school principal, may not be the hero everyone thinks him to be.

As they try to heal from this irrevocable trauma, Jenn and Charlotte find themselves at a crossroads—within the town and within their friendship. For Jenn, broken and grieving, there is no going back, and she demands that the school be closed so that she can bury the past. Yet Charlotte is equally desperate to hold the town together, fighting the school closure and helping the shooter’s mother regain her place in the community. Jenn and Charlotte’s relationship is put to the ultimate test as each weighs her own interests against the bonds of their friendship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Nov 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491535134

Steena Holmes

Steena Holmes is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of titles including Saving Abby, Stillwater Rising, and The Memory Child. Named to the “20 Best Books by Women in 2015” list by Good Housekeeping and Redbook, Steena won the National Indie Excellence Award in 2012 for Finding Emma as well as the USA Book News Award for The Word Game in 2015. Steena lives in Calgary, Alberta, and is a self-proclaimed “travelholic” who can’t resist a good cup of coffee. To find out more about her books and her love of traveling, you can visit her website at www.steenaholmes.com or follow her journeys on Instagram @authorsteenaholmes.

Reviews for Stillwater Rising

[terry_mitchell-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What happens to a town after tragedy strikes, do you ever wonder how the people affected by tragic events like…a student walking into a school with the intent to kill. I can’t even imagine what it would take to get over a tragedy like this. To band together as a town to bring everyone through the grief and pain it would cause.
Stillwater Rises tells this story. The story of how one town was faced with a terrible tragedy, a young troubled man struggling with burdens that wrecked his heart, walked into a school full of children and teachers and shot and killed many and then took his life. A tragedy that cannot be justified or reasoned and only leaves those behind with grief and often anger that they don’t know how carry on from. But with love and help from those capable of giving it, even in unbelievable circumstances is how people carry on after something so horrifying.
But this story is more than just that, it also is a story of how to help those we don’t think about…the victims that are leftover that are forgotten, or even blamed for. The mother of the shooter, a woman no doubt wracked with grief not only for her own child, but every life her child took. The pain and guilt a woman like this might endure is hard to understand. Many may choose to hate her for her child’s choices, that she over everyone else should have been able to control this angry young man; she should have seen this coming and stopped it. It’s a lot of responsibility to put on the shoulders of a grieving mother, responsibility that she herself has already taken and almost never recovers from.
How does a town recover from tragedy like this? The rally together, they support each other and comfort each other. They love through the pain and they remember each one they lost.
This story was a surprise for me; I have spent time recently putting myself in the shoes of parents on both sides of this fence not long before picking up this story to read. So it seemed fitting to read this book with such a refreshing take on the “after” of a tragedy like this. It helped me to see more than just one side of the story.

[susan0316 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is the first in a series about a small town where a school shooting occurs. The three main characters are Jennifer, the mother of a boy killed in the shooting; Charlotte the mayor of the town, who wants to get past the shooting and Julia, the mother of the boy who did the shooting. This book is mainly about Jennifer and her struggle to learn to live her life again after the death of her son. I found this book to be very emotional, in fact I had to put it down occasionally because it was so emotional. I felt so sorry for Jenn as she struggled to learn to help herself and her daughter and husband. It was a fantastic book and I look forward to reading the rest of the books in the series.

[bookdivasreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's hard to imagine the heartbreak of a parent that has lost a child. What's even more unimaginable is when that loss is at the hands of another child. We've all read headlines or listened to stories about the horror of school shootings. Even though we may empathize with the families, it is difficult to imagine the pain the families feel or how they can ever learn to live with their grief and heartbreak. Stillwater Rising is a story of one town's struggle to survive in the face of such tragedy and loss.Ms. Holmes has presented a story that not only shines a light on the tragedy of school shootings, but shows how the fictional small town of Stillwater Bay bands together to survive. At the heart of the story are three women: the mother of one of murdered children, Jennifer Crowne; the mayor of the town and wife to the school principal, Charlotte Stone; the mother of the murderer, Julia Berry. Jennifer is in deep mourning over the loss of her youngest child, Bobby. She used to be an active member of the community, but is struggling to survive each day without her son. Charlotte is trying to be there for her town, her friends, and her husband. She's also struggling to provide some semblance of normality for the town by being strong. There are some that feel she doesn't understand because she isn't a parent and didn't suffer a direct loss as a result of the tragedy. Julia Berry is another parent struggling with grief, but also with guilt. It is her son that perpetrated this atrocity and she feels that she must be responsible since she was his parent. In addition to her guilt and grief, she is also struggling with a serious health condition. As a direct result of her guilt, she has become a hermit and has confined herself to her home. All three of these women are dealing with their own sense of guilt over that fateful day. One feels the answer is to shutter the school, tear it down, and build a memorial to honor those lost. One feels that closing the school isn't the answer as it will put the teachers and staff out of work and harm the economy of the town. The other is simply overwhelmed by her guilt and feels that she should run away from Stillwater Bay in order to allow the other grieving families peace and space. Stillwater Rising wasn't an easy read but it was a touching story about recovering from an impossible loss. The characters were realistic and the action wholly plausible. I find it difficult to quantify Stillwater Rising in any specific genre other than contemporary fiction. This isn't a lighthearted read, but it is a powerful story about hope and survival in the face of tragedy. I don't know if this is the type of story for everyone, but it definitely left this reader with the sense that people can work together to overcome their worst nightmare. The healing may not take place in a few months, or even a few years, but with hope and respect for one another it is possible. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in this series, Stillwater Deep, as I want to watch this community continue to heal.

[cherylk_44 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a powerful story. So with a powerful story you need strong, good characters. They need to be able to evoke emotions that make you want to love/hate, cry/laugh, cheer/scream with them. I may not have done all of this while reading this book but I sure did enjoy reading it. I liked the fact that this story focused on the after affects of the terrible incident with the three women. I have read other stories where it was focused on the students/victims or the before story leading up to the situation but not usually on the mothers. In the beginning, Jenn rubbed me the wrong way. I totally understood her feelings and why she was so mad and jaded but she came off really bitchy. Whereas, Charlotte I found to have a good balance of trying to be Mayor and at the same time a friend. Then there is Julia. She is the shooter's mother. I really felt sorry for her. Yes, I have read stories of school shooting but the stories are usually focused on the survivors and not the parents of the shoot. They also are victims. So what happens to them afterwards. I am sure the same thing that Julia went through in this story. With people egging her place, writing slur words on her house, among other things. The ending was a good one. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

[wrbinpa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Stillwater was an obscure and quaint little town, with beautiful Victorian houses, surrounded by white picket fences. The population was just under 3,000, but when summer arrived the numbers doubled or tripled because of its proximity to the bay. It was hard to believe that something so horrific as a school shooting could happen in this picturesque town of Stillwater. There had been twelve deaths, twelve lives snuffed out in a tragic way. The children’s innocence had been taken away at an early age in a terrifying way. Jennifer’s ten-year-old son was one of the last children to be found that day. The mere mention of her son’s name brought images that would haunt her for the rest of her life. She was expected to move on with her life, but she just wanted to bury herself in her grief. Jen believed it was horrible and unfair to the children and parents of Stillwater to be exposed to a place where so many lives were lost, forcing them to face the horrors of their past. She wanted them to tear down the school and relocate it. She truly believed the town needed time to grieve. Robert is the husband of Jennifer, but disagreed with her reasoning. He wanted to pretend the tragedy never happened and didn’t allow or take time to grieve for their loss. Charity is the rather disrespectful daughter of Robert and Jennifer. The sweet and charming daughter her parents once knew was gone, and she became a thirteen-year-old with mood swings.Jordan Stone served as principal at Stillwater Public School. He had been praised for his heroic acts, saving countless lives at the shooting. He was the perfect principal and perfect partner and husband during the aftermath of this shooting. And he was the perfect hero to the children in the school. Charlotte Stone was the mayor and wife of Principle Jordan Stone. Charlotte took her job as mayor seriously, and believed the children and their families were resilient and would heal. She believed the children and town needed to face what had happened and move on. She didn’t want the evil that had happened to win, but wanted them to become victors, not victims. Was she trying to push everyone past the grieving before they were ready? Julia Berry was the mother of the 16-year-old shooter. Her son was the boy who always seemed to be in trouble. From early on, in his childhood, everyone knew Gabriel Berry had bad blood in him. She wasn’t the murderer or the monster that committed this horrific act, but she’d given birth to him. Julia had become a victim, and many of the town citizens were caught up in tearing her apart and doing hatred acts. Samantha Hill was a reporter from UCN. There was a story here, and it was her goal to help the readers become invested in the news. She was one of the first reporters on the scene, and still had nightmares of that horrible day. There was something about this town that made her want to stay on. And she had a feeling the principal was hiding something. If the school closed, what would happen to the 200 students who attended there? Most of the families with small children would most likely move to another area. Also they had to consider the teachers and support staff – they would be without jobs, and teaching positions were not easy to find. And the story unfolds ---I was drawn into this book early on with its interesting premise – it had the potential to be a good story. Unfortunately, the story just lost something, and I started to lose interest – it just didn’t touch me. I never connected to most of the characters, not finding them to have much depth. And there was an over abundance of characters – a bit difficult to deep them all straight. On a positive note – There were some scenes that really touched me – poignant circumstances of grief that were emotional and intense. The school-shooting topic evoked many questions in my mind. If I were living in that town, how would I have reacted?Steena Holmes is one of my favorites. I’m assuming there will be a second book in this series and I’m sure I’ll be reading it. But this one is just lukewarm. My rating is 3.5 stars. I received a complimentary copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions shared are my own.