Happy Halloween, YAL readers! If you're looking to curl up with a good book this weekend, maybe with a bowl of candy nearby, look no further than our Kia Jane Richmond's recommendation for this Weekend Pick.
 Kia Jane Richmond with Whiskers, 1969 | Dr. Kia Jane Richmond is Professor and Director of English Education at Northern Michigan University and author of Mental Illness in Young Adult Literature: Real Struggles through Fictional Characters (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is a frequent presenter at NCTE, ELATE, ALAN, CEL, and MCTE conferences and has published many articles and book chapters focused on young adult literature and teacher preparation in English Language Arts. She can be reached at [email protected]. Note, picture at left: Kia with Whiskers in 1969. The family doctor recommended getting Kia a cat to give her something to take care of while her daddy was overseas during the Vietnam War. |
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
 | Another of Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning books, The Impossible Knife of Memory, is a fantastic read for young adults. The book starts when main character Hayley Kincain, who has just turned eighteen, relocates with her now-retired military father (Captain Andy Kincain) to his hometown in New England. She has not attended a brick-and-mortar school for many years because she’s been riding back and forth across the country with her father in his eighteen-wheeler. Hayley notes that there are two types of teenagers - zombies and freaks – and “high school is where the zombification process becomes deadly” (4). Anderson’s book focuses, as most young adult novels do, on how the protagonist gets along with others in her social group(s) and overcomes (or at least deals with) some kind of obstacle. However, in this novel, it is Hayley’s relationship with her father that takes center stage: the difficulty comes from Captain Kincain’s active symptoms of two different mental illnesses: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol/marijuana use disorders. |
| Readers learn a great deal from Anderson about what it’s like to live with a relative who is struggling with symptoms of PTSD, which can include hallucinations, anxiety, panic attacks, intrusive memories or flashbacks, nightmares, negative thoughts about the self, heightened arousal, difficulty sleeping, irritability, and aggression, among others (PTSD and DSM-5 - PTSD: National Center for PTSD). For Hayley, her dad’s erratic behavior interrupts her days and her nights, her thoughts and her emotions. She has spent years taking care of him, cleaning up after him, and worrying about him. And thus, she has developed a kind of secondary PTSD, which is shown by her own symptoms of feeling anxious and demonstrating a need to be “on guard” (hypervigilant) a lot of the time and to feel helpless at times (and as a teenager, she has limited agency in terms of her father’s decision-making process). |  Laurie Halse Anderson |
Having a parent who has PTSD is hard enough, but Hayley also has one who drinks himself into oblivion on a regular basis and uses marijuana in an attempt to numb out and silence the voices from the past that haunt his dreams.
As the daughter of a retired Air Force major who was on active duty in Okinawa and Thailand during the Vietnam War Era, I developed a powerful connection to Hayley Kincain’s character despite the fact that we have very different personalities. What we share most is a desire to understand our fathers, to push past symptoms of PTSD, alcoholism, and not wanting to talk about what happened “over there” and toward a healthy relationship that could nurture us throughout our lives. What I didn’t expect in reading this book was to develop a better understanding of military veterans living with PTSD. That’s author Anderson’s gift: the ability to create characters so realistic that we can accept them for who they are, warts and all, and root for them to overcome obstacles even when they disappoint us.
As the daughter of a retired Air Force major who was on active duty in Okinawa and Thailand during the Vietnam War Era, I developed a powerful connection to Hayley Kincain’s character despite the fact that we have very different personalities. What we share most is a desire to understand our fathers, to push past symptoms of PTSD, alcoholism, and not wanting to talk about what happened “over there” and toward a healthy relationship that could nurture us throughout our lives. What I didn’t expect in reading this book was to develop a better understanding of military veterans living with PTSD. That’s author Anderson’s gift: the ability to create characters so realistic that we can accept them for who they are, warts and all, and root for them to overcome obstacles even when they disappoint us.
I encourage anyone who has a loved one in the military, or who has a friend with a family member in the armed forces, to give The Impossible Knife of Memory a read. Laurie Halse Anderson’s writing style is engaging and poetic, giving readers the perfect blend of realism and fiction. This novel is an excellent choice for readers of all genders and generations.
The Impossible Knife of Memory won the Publishers Weekly Best Young Adult Book of 2014 and the School Library Journal Best Young Adult Book of 2014, and was a National Book Award longlist finalist and New York Times bestseller.
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