I loved that both Jason and Laura stayed intact, in spite of the odds against them. In both cases, the exercise proved to be largely lost on the parents, but a means of release and healing for the protagonists. Jason is finally able to express his true feelings to his dad, and so does Laura with her mom. (Laura goes digging, and doesn’t stop until she has discovered the truth that empowers her to go on with her life.)
He convinces his caseworker to request a hearing, at which Jason states his case that he can maintain his grades and visit his father daily to assure continuity until permanent care can be arranged. When insurance dictates that Jason’s father must be released from the hospital for a couple of months before a care-facility can take him, and a judge orders Jason not be involved in his father’s care, Jason reacts. (Laura gets “removed” to her aunt’s house for a period of time). Shelby, one of the three friends with whom Jason has a mutual attraction, reports Jason’s situation to the authorities who remove him to a foster home. Laura experiences the same thing, surprisingly not with her best friend, but with a persistent and compassionate boy and an artist who becomes a mother-figure. Jason finds solace and a new strength when he begins to confide in his three new friends. (Laura has a group of friends with whom she doesn’t confide, but who give her unwitting support). When Jason’s father goes missing, the three jump in with genuine concern and quickly become Jason’s new and only friends. His life is sliding drastically downhill when the school psychologist hooks him up with a lunchtime support group of three other students in various stages of family dysfunction. (To a lesser degree, Laura is haunted by voices in her head, as well). In his isolation from the rest of the world, Jason relies on voices of imagined characters to guide him through the challenges he faces. Nolan’s protagonist, Jason, is a 15-year-old (same as my Laura) who is desperately trying to care for a mentally ill father, after the recent death of his mother.
I’m just saying, I think we may have made some similar points coming at it from totally different points of view, and as far as advocating for better mental health goes, that’s all good. I’m not implying my book is national book award material. I think that information might have seemed daunting and intimidating to me early on, but today, when I finished her Crazy, I felt good about some of the parallels in our books. Nolan is a national book award winner (Dancing on the Edge) and finalist (Send Me Down a Miracle). For whatever reason, I didn’t get around to reading Han Nolan’s Crazy until just recently, and I think that worked out for the best, as well. When it came time to solidify the title for my book, the duplication didn’t seem to be an issue. I knew there were other books out there titled Crazy and so did my publisher, Eerdmans.
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