Getting Serious with "Sure Signs of Crazy"

Sometimes trying to describe a book succinctly does it a real disservice, because the story itself is hard to encapsulate well. I’m risking that by giving a short description, but here goes.

In Sure Signs of Crazy, 12-year-old Sarah Nelson and her alcoholic father have moved from town to town in Texas throughout her young life. She usually spends summers with her grandparents, but is hoping for something different this summer. She is growing up, though no one seems to recognize it. She loves words and plants, and she is obsessed with Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird (that was enough to win me over all by itself).

But looming large over everything else is the fact that her mother is in a mental hospital as a result of her attempt to drown Sarah when she was only two years old, and she succeeded in drowning Sarah’s twin brother. Sarah is haunted by the thought that she too could be headed down the road to mental illness, and she searches herself for signs.

Author Karen Harrington either kept excellent notes during her own experience of this age or she has observed others very closely; she completely nails what it is to be a girl on the edge of adolescence. Sarah wants so badly to be taken seriously by those older than her, and at the same time she wants to be taken care of by her father in the way that any child deserves.

When I first looked at the book, I thought that this was an odd choice of storylines for young people, and I thought that people living with mental illness should not be something that you fear--even the use of the word "crazy" seems immediately pejorative. Somehow the author walks that dangerous line successfully. Part of the reason for that is that it's from the perspective of a traumatized girl, and that is probably how she would describe her mother.

While this novel deals with some pretty heavy-hitting events, it does so with a gentle touch and an honest love for all of the characters. The publisher lists this as a novel for ages 9 and up—I’d bump that minimum age up to mature 12-year-olds. But I’m living proof the book isn’t limited to the children’s market--I couldn't put it down.