Seventeen year old Jersey Hatch is coming home. Having spent the better part of the last year of his life in the hospital and then at a rehabilitation center, he is home again, trying to get on with his life, but his old friends want nothing to do with him, the part of his brain that is damaged makes it hard for him to function in social situations, and his parents have forgotten how to be a family. Most of all, though, Jersey cannot remember the events leading up to his failed suicide attempt. With the help of tough yet loving Mama Rush and sympathetic Leza, Jersey is trying to remember, to figure things out, while learning how to live again. Susan Vaught has created a masterful book, dark and somber, but engrossing, sucking the reader in so that the book feels almost like a page turner of sorts. Vaught knows what she is writing about, having a background in neuropsychology, but it still takes a masterful hand to translate that to a well written story full of real people. Having been around too many suicides as a teen, it is this reviewer's thought that teens everywhere should read and discuss this book for a very real picture of what suicide is and does and how it effects everyone.
Five stars