"She put the survival knife down on the table." So begins When She Hollers by Cynthia Voigt, one of the first books I remember reading that could be considered an 'issue' book.
When I first opened this book, I didn't really know what to expect. I was somewhere are 8th grade, and a majority of my reading in recent years was Mary Higgins Clark or Willo David Roberts. Murder mysteries where the bad guy always gets caught, and the good guy always saves (and gets) the girl, and books about kids outsmarting adults in all sorts of implausible situations didn't really prepare me for the gut punch I felt when I started this book.
I picked it up because I had read Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman Saga, which begins with Homecoming. I loved the Tillerman Saga. They are sad yet hopeful books, stories of children with unsure families and futures who make their own way in the world by necessity, never by choice. I loved these books. They touched me as a young girl, and I was amazed that any character could possess that kind of strength. (You will definitely be hearing more about these books in the future). Because I loved these books so much, I started picking up other books by Voigt. This led me to Jackaroo, which is the first of Voigt's loosely connected Novels of a Kingdom set.
By the time I got around to this book, I wasn't even really paying attention to summaries anymore. I just saw Voigt's name on the cover and thought — Yes. So, I read the book. And Oh. My. Goodness. This was not what I was expecting. Voigt doesn't pull any punches with this story. She tells us the story of Tish and her pain with such vividness that I didn't know what to do. I had been exposed to something like this that pulled absolutely no punches with the telling. You see, Tish is young, 13 or 14 at most and her step-father rapes her. Her mother doesn't believe her, or maybe, doesn't want to believe her would be more accurate and Tish doesn't know how to make it stop. So she gets a knife. And she decides that she is going to keep it with her at all times, no matter what, because it's the only way she will ever be safe again.
This book opened my eyes, broke my heart, and both hurt and healed my soul. Tish has had so much bad already in her young life. This man who is supposed to take care of her, who used to treasure and dote upon her now hurts her all the time, and no one will listen to her. So she tries to make them listen. And when they don't, she takes her survival into her own hands and proves that she is stronger than they are, that although the experience will scar her and change her, she won't let it ruin her.
This book, and my experience with it is largely responsible for the pull I feel toward 'issue' books. There is something about the struggle of a character toward life and light when their whole existence is filled with pain and suffering that really pulls me in and forces my interest and attention. I actually wonder if this book, and others like it isn't what really sparked my interest in Psychology, and working with teenagers.
I need to reread this book, if for no other reason than as a way of saying thank you to a book that changed my life. It's one I recommend. It will hurt a place inside of you, because Tish is so young, and she's hurting, but it will ultimately leave you feeling hopeful because Tish is going to make it after all.