What are the pressures that create the teenage murders that all too often litter the news? Everyone asks why kids do it...especially children from seemingly affluent families. Karen Cook has created an all too plausible account of the pressures that face children in today's world. There are many changes in the past twenty years: latchkey kids, computers that offer easy access to pornography, overtired and stressed parents, teachers who aren't clued in to where kids are at and use misguided extremes of discipline.

In No Tolerance, Lisa Mason is a lonely teenager who has been transplanted by her parents' career changes to Arizona from Cleveland. Lisa is shy and unassertive, and her parents are chasing the American dream. Her eldest brother Danny is off to college, and her other brother Jason is also trying to find himself. After her grades drop, Lisa meets up with a dream basketball coach, who becomes her mentor, but leaves after one year. In the meantime, Lisa is raped by one of her brother's friends. Terrified of telling anyone, her rage builds up to an explosion when this boy continues trying to control her. Instead of helping her, the "system" of police and school officials are all too ready to brand her as a "problem child." Her problems escalate, her weight drops, and she becomes depressed. Another group of boys harass her at school, until she thinks she has no more options than to grab her fathers gun and try to solve the problem herself. Tragically, she kills the ringleader of her harassers and the very coach she loves and misses:

"One bad decision can shatter so many lives. Danny was in the University library when he heard. A friend walked in saying, 'Hey. The news just broadcast another school shooting, this time in Phoenix. Don't you have a sister in high school there? I don't remember the school's name.' Danny left his books and ran to his apartment in panic. He said he knew. He knew I was involved. He knew I had done it."

Cook's brilliant story hits us all where we need it. We are letting our children down in exchange for chasing after the almighty dollar. A change is needed, and this story is a gem! Great!!!

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This book will touch your life!  May 27, 2001
By Scott M. Kinghorn "spindoc"
This is wonderful a book that reaches out to some very serious issues in this day and age, that many of us did not experience growing up. It does not matter your age or back ground you will found that this story will effect your thinking and open your eyes to the needs of the children, as well as touch a place in your own heart and memories.