“Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.” -Desmond Tutu. Secrets, lies, and death. Growing up without a mother at a young age would be very difficult, especially when your father blurs over the details of her death, even though you are still trying to cope with the loss. Envision you are fourteen years old and your mother, a famous model, passed away because she was suddenly hit by a cab. You know that it was no accident and that your father, an acclaimed film director is hiding the truth from you. You Have Seven Messages, written by Stewart Lewis, features Luna, a grieving teenager who is curious about her mother’s death, a year later. She decides to go to her mother’s studio, which no one has visited since…show more content… She believes her mother had a secret life that she knew nothing about. Throughout the book, Luna must learn forgive her father, Jules, her mother’s new “boyfriend”, Cole, and her crush, Oliver, despite all that they have put her through. This ties into the meaning of forgiveness and courage and the ability to move forward. First, the author writes, “He was there. He watched her die. As much as I want to kill him, a small part of me feels sorry for him.” (324) Throughout the whole story, Luna is always a bit frustrated with her father because she can tell he has been keeping secrets about her mother’s death. The more evidence she finds, the more suspicious she gets. When she tries to ask him about it, he quickly pushes the topic away. This angers her more. Luna was tired of being lied to. She believed she was old enough and deserved to know the truth. The tension between Luna and her father caused her to not trust him and also made her grieving process a lot harder. Finally, Luna’s dad decides to tell her the whole story after she finds out the man her mom had been seeing and that he was with her mother the night she died. By the
