The teachers were trained to lock down their classrooms and “shelter in place.” Ross does the opposite, she figures out a way to get her students out of the building. Her pupils live through this while some others don’t. After the perpetrator’s attack ends, we don’t learn much about him, just that as almost always, the shooter was male. Ross returns to the building to search for her son.
Lydan got shot many times. He undergoes multiple surgeries and somehow, miraculously, he survives, but it is now touch and go. His mom is camped out in the intensive care unit with her son. The TV is on when she notices a man, a talking head named Maximillian Akers, the founder of an organization called “More Guns, Less Crime,” is being interviewed.
She observes with horror as Akers explains how Americans would be safer if every teacher and student carried a gun and that somehow this would deter school shootings. When Akers states that “some even say these events at schools are staged,” Elizabeth Ross feels repulsion: “nausea bubbles in me.”
Rickstad has created a one-dimensional character in Akers. Akers has zero sympathy for the children who were massacred and most readers will feel little sympathy for him. He’s clearly modeled slightly on Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who perpetrated falsehoods about the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Listening to Akers triggers something inside Ross: loathing, rage, a lust for revenge. Even though Akers had nothing to do with what happened to her son, he then becomes the focal point in her mind for exacting retribution — for sending a message, for actually doing something about the situation.
After the tragic shooting five years ago in the Oregon District, we heard the typical platitudes from politicians: thoughts and prayers, we have to do something, blah, blah, blah. Then they did nothing. Elizabeth Ross decides to do something. I’ll leave it to readers to discover what it is that she does.
I spoke to the author recently. He explained to me that he’s a hunter and that he owns seven guns. He clarified that all his guns are for hunting, that they were not designed for hunting human beings. There’s a difference. “Lilith” makes a fierce fictional statement about a very contentious issue.
Vick Mickunas of Yellow Springs interviews authors every Saturday at 7 a.m. and on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit wyso.org/programs/book-nook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
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