How to Be Safe

February 26, 2018
For a brief time in the relentless latest from McAllister (following The Young Widower’s Handbook), suspended high school English teacher Anna Crawford is named a person of interest in the police investigation of a mass shooting at her school. Her first-person narrative picks up in the aftermath of the tragedy. Anna was suspended before the shooting for an unspecified outburst in the classroom. After the shooting, which ends when the unnamed male shooter kills himself, broadcast journalists show her picture and identify her as a suspect. In the chaos following the tragedy, she is bombarded with threatening phone calls, her home is searched by the FBI, and friends betray her. Even after the shooter is identified as a student and it is proven that he had no accomplices, the damage done to Anna proves hard for her to move past. McAllister’s novel unfolds both as grim social commentary and a subtle exploration of the stages of grief. Anna, with some gallows humor, describes journalists swarming the young shooter’s house and analyzing him ad nauseam, the way she becomes a target for well-wishers seeking to save her, and the constant churning arguments of both gun control opponents and proponents. Though Anna’s voice is strong, the novel falters in its depiction of the tragedy’s fallout, often electing to skim the surface instead of going deep.