Parallel Visions (2012), by Cheryl Rainfield

Parallel Visions was available for only 99¢ on a website for ebooks, which seems rather odd, as many cheap or free ebooks are, to be candid, complete trash. I found Cheryl Rainfield’s Hunted to be a gripping story of trial and compassion, so I was interested in what I might find from a cheap ebook by the same author. While Parallel Visions is shorter, at 96 pages, it is equally imbued with a sense of the power of human connection, of how love and compassion ground us within our realities, no matter how alternative those realities may seem.

In Parallel Visions, the protagonist, Kate, is asthmatic; not only that, but every time she has an asthma attack, she sees visions. These visions sometimes reveal the past, sometimes the present, and sometimes the future. It is the future visions that disturb Kate most, because whenever she tries to prevent injury to someone else, she is scoffed at, disbelieved, or worse, ultimately blamed when the horrible predictions in her vision comes true. Kate hates being “the sick kid” at school, and pushes herself harder than she should. When she is helped in an attack by the boy she likes from afar—Gil—she has a vision of both her sister and his: both in future trouble, both safe at the moment. Unlike others, Gil believes her. Together, Gil and Kate work to save their sisters, and in so doing build a relationship founded on trust (with, of course, the requisite amount of teenage romance). Kate ultimately brings on an asthma attack to learn more about what will happen to their sisters, and readers are asked to consider the cost of helping others: at what point is it more important to look after yourself? Is it worth risking your own life, knowingly, to save another’s? While Kate ultimately answers this question unequivocally, the narrative leaves room for consideration by the reader. Kate’s relationship with her family, and with Gil and his, teach her the value of her own life as part of an organic whole that is not only family, but community, and the greater world.

A Troublesome Boy (2012), by Paul Vasey

Paul Vasey is identified on the back cover as “a boarding school survivor” [my emphasis], which suggests perhaps too subjective a perspective in his fictional representation of life at an abusive Catholic boarding school. A Troublesome Boy is an extremely well-written novel, but also extremely disturbing, as it is intended to be. What is most problematic, for me, though, is not truly knowing the boundaries between reality and fiction. I would like to think that the abuse rampant at “St. Iggy’s” is fictional, but I know it is not. I would like to think that the systemic willful ignorance—even acceptance—of such abuse is fiction, but I know it is not. I would like to think that the extent of the corruption that allows Church officials to remain untried for their crimes (even the local policeman covers for the guilty priest) is fiction, but I think it is not. Still, Vasey’s novel leaves me feeling that the degree and frequency of the physical—as well as emotional and sexual—abuse that the Fathers at St. Iggy’s are responsible for is excessive: while no single incident rings false, overall Teddy and Timothy’s experiences are too much to take in. The mind (my mind at least) screams that this must be over-dramatized. Which leads me not to want to recommend this text except with the strongest of caveats against emotional trauma for the reader. And in the end, while Teddy and Timothy’s stories are told, there is no hope given.  In 1959, when the story is set, there is nothing to expect except an inexorable continuation of the criminal and damaging status quo. This, too, we know to have been true until very recently.

A powerful novel, containing perhaps too much truth. So what, then, is my problem? My problem is, I think, that beside all of the abuse, all of the sins of the Church, which are real, this novel does not show any of the very Christian, courageous individuals who also constitute the Catholic Church. I myself was smacked upside the head (granted not at boarding school) for insisting that mountains in a drawing of Jesus could be purple (defying visual logic), by a Nun who was known to enjoy hitting children; except for that one case, the Priests and Nuns who crossed my path were intelligent, compassionate, spiritually supportive individuals. Overall, the good people far outweighed the bad, positive learning far outweighed the injustices. The history of the Catholic Church as an institution is abysmal, unquestionably, but A Troublesome Boy troubled me mostly because its truth is not mitigated by the more complex reality that is, and was, even in 1959, Catholicism.

The Taming (2012), by Eric Walters and Teresa Toten

Katie is invisible. She likes it that way. It’s safer than standing out, given her borderline-alcoholic mother with a history of bad choices in male companions. The one before last, for example, had been a real problem… But then Katie is cast as Katherina in her highschool production of The Taming of the Shrew. On the stage, she can be as strong as she knows she is inside, and it feels right. And she is good. Everyone tells her so, including the new boy, Evan…

Evan has come down in the world, from a life of private schools to a public highschool where he has little respect for his peers and none for his teachers or the administration. His privileged life continues: the clothes, the Audi, the attitudes that carry him through life and impress all the girls, including Katie… but also the psycho-emotional price he pays for having, as his father puts it, a “higher market value” (113).

Eric Walters and Theresa Toten take turns writing sections of the novel from the perspective of these two teens as they come together both on and off stage.  Seeing their carefully crafted relationship from both sides will be illuminating for young readers, who often wonder how the other gender functions.  But while Katie is an excellent example of a strong but seriously troubled teen struggling to come to terms with past abuse and present insecurity, Evan is initially—no, for most of the novel—little more than a Letch-in-Prince-Charming’s-clothing.  His actions seem to be all that Katie thinks they are, but his inner monologue foreshadows the pain he will cause her before the novel is over.  The way this dynamic is structured presents a strong warning to all young girls regarding many boys’ intent: the warnings our mothers and fathers give us, but we never believe.  Katie’s friends Travis and Lisa, too, are wary of the attention Evan showers on her, and—as similarly socially outcaste before the advent of Evan—are strongly supportive, even when their concern angers Katie.  The workings of these teens’ relationships are carefully and effectively constructed; we see these characters as real teens within their fictional setting. When Katie and Evan’s relationship reaches its climactic moments, we are left to consider seriously the two personalities, the social and familial causes of their several problems, and how they as individuals choose to respond to the traumas of childhood and adolescence.

In the end, unquestionably, Katie stands strong.  She tells Evan unequivocally: “You taught me so much, Evan. About myself, about … so much,” but she has grown beyond his reach: “You need help. Your father … Get help, Evan. […] No one will ever lay an hand on me again” (223-9).  Evan, always in control—taught control as the only acceptable modus operandi by his domineering financier father—has lost what he has fortunately come to realize is a prize worth keeping: Katie’s love.  We see Katie’s growth; we see the healing that goes on in her family, the potential for happiness that she helps to establish for herself and her mother. With Evan, there is less evidence of change. Certainly he does stand up to his father on behalf of his powerless mother, and he does finally admit to himself that he needs healing, needs Katie’s love as much as he used to mistakenly think she needed his mojo.  But in the end we are left with only the possibility of his seeking the professional help he needs, and standing up to his father once seems only too likely to create more barriers to healing. Evan is going to find only resistance, not assistance, from his family. Still, his moment of realization is strong, and we can only hope that Evan has learned as much, as effectively, from Katie as she has learned from him. What is certain is that teen readers have much to learn from both of them. The novel is so well crafted that the learning will come gradually, accompanied by powerful vicarious emotions that I think will help them prepare for real relationship dilemmas when—hopefully only if—they are encountered.