What We Do To The Dead
review of a martyrdom novel that almost worked
My book reviews, among the eclectic mix of topics I write about, do surprisingly well. This continues to surprise me, because I never feel like they’re anywhere near my best writing. And I think I know why.
It’s because of a rule I made for myself — one that makes every review an uphill climb.
The rule is this: except when I’m mocking Woke insanity, I never write negative reviews.
When a book is fully Woke nonsense — like the one I reviewed here, a book so committed to gender ideology that the author invented new pronouns and demanded readers not misgender the characters — then yes, it’s game on.
But those are easy. So easy. I can write snark half-asleep, with one hand tied behind my back and the other scrolling Twitter.
The real challenge is writing something that respects the reader’s time and the author’s effort. I write to clarify my own thoughts, not to score points. And aside from turning off comments when I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to respond kindly to people who are inevitably going to be annoying, I don’t spend much time thinking about audience response.
But this rule? This is where I do think about it.
If something’s so effortless that I can crank it out without trying, it feels disrespectful to put it behind a paywall. I won’t do that. Throwing a rock through a window is easy. An angry little kid can do it effectively. Installing a window, though? That’s harder. It takes time, and skill, and the ability to do something that matters.
Writing a review that builds something — something clear, generous, honest, and maybe even motivating — that’s what I’m aiming for.
Which brings me to That’s Not What Happened, by Kody Keplinger.
It’s a martyrdom novel — and a smart one. One particular story thread directly invokes the Columbine massacre and the legend of Cassie Bernall: the girl supposedly shot for saying she believed in God. That part of the book is handled beautifully. In many ways, the whole novel is beautifully executed. I wanted to love it. I did love it — right up until the moment the author cleared her throat, pulled out her Woke Oppressed Victims checklist, and started Doing Representation To Educate The Reader.
And maybe that wasn’t entirely her fault. The publishing industry today is so pathologically Woke that perhaps she had no choice. Maybe she had to layer in the sanctified identities to get the green light. I don’t know. I can’t know.
But the result is what it is.
It was like sitting down to a carefully prepared, thoughtfully plated meal — and spotting a pile of dog shit on the floor beneath your table. Not in the food. Not even near the food. But there, unmistakably. You can still finish your meal. But you won’t forget the smell.
And so I have to do the hardest thing: write the positive review I want to write, while still being honest enough to tell you — this restaurant? It’s good. But someone needs to mop the floor.
The novel opens three years after a school massacre that killed nine people, including Sarah McHale. Sarah’s memory has since been canonized. She’s the subject of multiple contemporary Christian songs, countless sermons, and a forthcoming book by her bereaved, now childless, parents. Her story has become legend.
Everyone — including a fellow survivor, now paralyzed from the waist down — believes they know her final words. That she looked the shooter in the eye and declared her faith. That she was targeted for believing in Jesus, and stood her ground. She was buried with a cross necklace, supposedly found near her body on the bathroom floor, where she’d been overheard defying the gunman with the certainty that God was still watching.
It’s a powerful story.
It’s also not true.
And in this novel, the truth — complicated, quieter, and far more human — begins to come out.
Leanne Bauer and Sarah McHale had been inseparable all their lives.
Leanne’s father was never in the picture, and her mom worked too many jobs to ever really be home. So Leanne spent uncountable hours in Sarah’s house — a warm, two-parent household where the fridge was full, the lights always worked, and Sarah’s parents gradually became something like her own. The girls talked every day. They were never apart. They had other friends, sure, but they orbited each other. That friendship was the center of gravity.
It was the kind of female best friendship that often doesn’t survive puberty and boys. But theirs did. When Sarah’s boyfriend showed up at school on Valentine’s Day with a big, showy gift for Sarah, he brought a pack of Skittles for Leanne too. Because Sarah didn’t come solo. She came as a package.
They were in the girls’ bathroom together when the shooting started.