As Good as She Imagined: The Redeeming Story of the Angel of Tucson, Christina-Taylor Green

Christina-Taylor Green was nine years old when she was murdered at a grocery store in Tucson, Ariz., where she had gone in hopes of meeting Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was gravely wounded at the same public event. Christina-Taylor’s mother allows readers to meet her little girl and the rest of the family in the story she tells of Christina-Taylor’s short life. Reading about the little girl is a lot like sitting down with a mother over coffee and hearing about a family, with both the intimacy and limitations that affords. The Green family was financially comfortable but faced their own difficulties before random tragedy struck in the form of a gunman who killed six people at Giffords’ Congress-on-your-Corner gathering. The family story told by her grieving mother is an attempt to commemorate her daughter. Christina-Taylor is young to be carrying so much symbolic weight, and it’s a little soon to draw lasting public meaning out of the event, but private grief deserves respect. (Jan.)