For tragic reasons, there will be no more timely book release this year. In the aftermath of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, American attitudes to gun control again made headlines across the world, as students challenged politicians to act to restrict access to firearms.
The moral force of their argument will be underlined by the UK publication next month of a much-praised debut novel telling the story of an American school shooting through the eyes of a six-year-old survivor.
Rhiannon Navin’s Only Child has been described in the Washington Post as “a breathtaking novel of grief and recovery”, drawing comparisons to Emma Donoghue’s Room and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
The 40-year-old author was inspired to write it after her five-year-old twins were taught how to behave during a school lockdown only a few weeks after beginning kindergarten.
“They were taken through the entire experience: lock the door, turn off the lights, pull down the shades and tell the children hide in the closet, under the desk, in the bathroom. Later that day I found my little guy, Garrett, hiding under the dining room table. I thought maybe he’d had a row with his sister, but he said: ‘I’m hiding from the bad guy, mama.’ He wouldn’t come out until I went under the table and gave him a hug.”
This experience, coupled with the subsequent failure of gun control reform after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, led Navin to wonder if a novel on the subject might help other parents who were feeling as concerned and frightened as she was.
“You just feel so incredibly helpless and outraged about the situation in schools right now,” she says. “You want your children to be learning about maths and science and worrying about who to sit next to for lunch, not is someone coming to school to shoot me today?”
Only Child is told from the point of view of Zach, six, whose seemingly secure world is blown apart by the tragedy as his parents struggle to come to term with his older brother Andy’s death. Prior to writing it, Navin, an advertising executive turned full-time mother, had never dreamed of becoming a novelist.
“When I first started writing I had no notion of it being published – I was writing for myself and didn’t imagine that anyone else would read it,” she says. “But then I finished it and it found a publisher and I began to hope that I might be able to help other parents in a similar position and allow them to work through their grief – because I think we all feel grief over what is happening in this country.
“My intention in writing the book was to offer hope to people who feel as scared as I did.”
An active campaigner in grassroots anti-gun groups such as Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America and Indivisible, Navin is convinced that the conversation is changing.
“We’re up against a really powerful, wealthy, greedy powerhouse [in the National Rifle Association] and these incredibly eloquent teenagers are not backing down. That’s inspiring.”
Only Child is published by Mantle on 8 March, £12.99
