Three months after the tragic death of her mother, 14-year-old Kimberly Jamieson is trying to piece her life back together. Step by muffled step, she is emerging from a self-imposed blanket of withdrawal – she has avoided her friends, dropped all after-school activities and skipped classes. She senses it is time to move forward – but how?

Author Ginny Russell, who’s set her second book in her hometown of Ladner, B.C. – itself a sustaining character in this novel about grief and recovery – has created a realistic, if somewhat frenetic portrayal of a teen coping with death. Kim grieves unpredictably – she is surprised by her tears, and caught off-guard enjoying herself with her best friend Susie and new friend Mike. She is frustrated by the well-meaning adults who won’t allow her to vent her anger and sadness – who either stampede her into “remembering the happy things about her mom,” or say nothing at all, as is the case with her busy policeman dad.

Kim also has a busy time of it – perhaps too busy. At 108 pages the canvas is too small for anything but a point-form rendering of Kim’s relationships with her grieving father, Susie and Susie’s twin brothers, her old musician friend Buzz, her mom’s best friend Sylvia, and two old orchestra pals, as well as her fledgling romance with Mike (an ace amateur reporter). These relationships are played out against an impending writing assignment, a runaway 11-year-old, and Buzz’s rescue from drugs. All these story threads feel not so much woven through as pasted on and then force-marched into a tidy resolution.

One opportunity raised and then missed is Kim’s spiritual evolution. Pre-adolescent girls often have a genuine preoccupation with “where is God in a crisis” or more pointedly, “where is God in my crisis?” Russell touches too neatly on Kim’s feelings of abandonment by her mother and by God. Ultimately, the lack of commitment to any one fully explored storyline precludes Step by Step from being a truly satisfying journey.