Finished: The First Day of Spring (Tucker) Intense, heartbreaking, emotional story that begins with an eight year old neglected girl declaring that she's just killed a neighborhood toddler with her bare hands...and she liked the power that it gave her and the way it made her feel inside. Chrissie, as she is known when she's a child, is neglected by completely unloving and irresponsible parents. She's not liked by anyone in the neighborhood or at school, except for one friend, Linda. She's starving every day and must fend for herself for food. The book goes back and forth between Chrissie chapters and Julia chapters. Julia is Chrissie at 25, who now has a five year old daughter of her own. She's overprotective, unsocial, and so worried that she will turn out to be as worthless as her own mother, that she barely takes any time to have fun with her daughter. She also worries that people from her past will find her and take revenge for what she did as a child. She reports to a probationary officer every month who keeps very close tabs on Chrissie's health and mindset, as well as her daughter's. The Chrissie childhood chapters are very disturbing as we read every thought that goes through her mind. When it is finally discovered that Chrissie is the one who took the life of the toddler, she is sentenced to a home for dangerous children until she's 18. Even though it is basically a prison for kids, she has people who are actually caring for her and working with her for the first time in her life. She doesn't want to go when they release her, but they give her a name change and send her into the real world. When she gets pregnant by a coworker, she is determined to make a better life for her own daughter. Will her past and her remorse over her murderous childhood actions ever let her forgive herself and succeed? It's a heartbreaking story for sure, written in a prose that hooks you from the beginning and puts you right into Chrissie's troubled mind.