Lulu Delacre,
Alicia Afterimage
Lee & Low, 2008.

Ages 14 +

A piercingly honest and compassionate picture of teen and maternal grief, Alicia Afterimage is author/illustrator Lulu Delacre’s first book for young adults.

One evening, in the fall of 2004, Delacre was plunged into the most painful and disorienting experience of her life: her sixteen-year-old daughter, Alicia, was killed in a car crash. Speeding and inexperience on the part of the young driver, whom Alicia had gone to the movies with, were listed in the police report as the cause of her death.

Some time after the funeral, in an attempt to sort out her own feelings, Delacre contacted Alicia’s friends. “She found that talking about Alicia, sharing memories and learning things she had never known about her daughter, helped her heal.” She wanted to know what Alicia meant to her friends, and how they were dealing with the loss. Their memories became the basis for Alicia’s Afterimage, which is just as much about a life lost as it is about a life lived.

Divided into third person accounts inspired by the memories of “Mamá,” “Papá” and thirteen friends, the book also includes a chapter for “The Driver” (who survived the accident and remains unnamed in the book).

Struggling to make sense of the shattering experience, and hardly able to hide their sense of unreality, Alicia’s friends recall her sunny and artistic nature (the pencil drawings that appear throughout the book are hers), her love of dance, her capacity for friendship, and her ability to listen to and empathize with people.

In the last chapter, “Mamá” talks about how she came to cope with her own loss; to understand her husband’s anger; to respect her older daughter’s need to grieve in private; and to, ultimately, forgive the driver. In the process of coping with a loss that most parents will never have to experience, Delacre has, through Alicia Afterimage, helped her daughter’s friends, and readers of all ages, to understand that there is no right or wrong way to grieve; and that grief, as difficult a process as it is, can also be an opportunity for personal growth.

Dedicated to “All grieving teens,” Alicia Afterimage includes selected reading and websites about teen grief and teen driver safety. It also includes a touching “Almost Four Year’s Later…” section that tells what has happened to each of Alicia’s friends since her death. Learning that “the driver” has started to tell his story publicly, in the hope that others won’t make the same mistakes he did, is just what we readers need to hear, before closing the book and telling every teen and parent we know to read it.

Aline Pereira
August 2009