Saving Jasey

by Tullson, Diane

• ISBN13: 9781551432205
• ISBN10: 155143220X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-03-01
• Publisher: Orca Book Pub

Summary

Saving Jasey Diane Tullson YALSA Quick Pick nominee 2003 Red Maple nominee 2003 PSLA YA Top Forty 2002 Confronting his family's cruelty and his friend's fear of a deadly disease, Gavin learns that life is often unfair. "Jasey thinks he's got it," he said. I sat up in the backseat. "Huntington's disease?" Not Grandpa Jack. "Why?" He snorted in disgust. "Says he's got mood swings." I thought of Blake, and my father, and my mother, and me. "Everybody has mood swings." Thirteen-year-old Gavin's homelife is far from perfect. His older brother is a bully, his father has no time for him, and his mother hasn't been the same since she hit a pig on the highway. Gavin finds sanctuary in his friend Trist McVeigh's seemingly perfect home. His blossoming infatuation with Trist's older sister Jasey helps fill the emotional void. But all is not as it seems in the McVeigh home. Trist's uncle suffers from Huntington's disease, a devastating degenerative brain disorder that may have been the reason for the suicide of Trist's father. Is Grandpa Jack also affected? And if so, are Trist and Jasey also in danger? Unable to deal with the threat of a potential illness, Jasey starts to self-destruct and she becomes involved with the worst kind of people. While trying to understand the dramatic changes in her personality, Gavin finds that the threat of a silent killer like Huntington's disease is as damaging as a corrosive family life. Gavin decides to do what he can to save Jasey and ultimately save himself. Saving Jasey is Diane Tullson's first novel and marks the debut of a powerful new voice in teen fiction. Weaving a story of domestic dysfunction with one teen's search for acceptance and hope, Diane tells an exciting story with just the right touch of humor and tension. For the last two years Diane Tullson has done her writing from the deck of a sailboat in the Mediterranean. Traveling with her husband and children, Diane is hard at work on her next novel.