Well, if this is really a songwriting thread....At the risk of taking Barbara at her word (don't ask for feedback, you may get it), I think that while there are parts of the song about Sara that I like, it is too overtly a message song. I don't think the relationship between the reportorial outrage and the emotional response is worked through enough, so that we are being pushed into feeling these emotions rather than having them emerge from our response to the situation. We see all this situation from the outside, and then we are asked to feel pity about it. Joyce once defined false sentiment as being allowed to indulge in the emotion without having paid the price. Songs about dead children almost invariably cross over that line.

If I could speak to the writer (Hey, I can!) I would for example ask for a verse or a line or two about Sara. As the song is, she is either a faceless victim or the projection of the sentimentality of the mourners (pictures on the coffin, etc.). I was even wondering if it would be even more powerful to have Sara live, but be gone. Into her own world. I have known abused children, and death is not the worst thing that happens to them.

Yours, Peter