The summer I went crazy happened forty years ago when I was just seventeen, but I've never forgotten.
It started with rape and ended with a promise. In between I fell in love, broke the law, and made an irrevocable decision.
The Summer I Went Crazy
by Laura Koerber
Genre: Coming of Age, YA Literary Fiction
The rule for guys like me was that we'd grow up to be like our parents. Our parents put a lot of work and money into making sure we did. I got it all: the expensive private school education, the summers in Europe, the family connections to a congressman and other influential people, an admission to Yale. I was fast tracked for success.
Instead, I became the witness to a rape.
And I fell in love, broke a bunch of laws, made an irrevocable decision, and made a lifetime promise.
And now, forty years later, I am making a phone call.
The Year I Went Crazy is a rewrite of an earlier novel, Coyote Summer. The plot is much the same, but Coyote Summer is a magical realism novel with a fantasy element, while The Summer I Went Crazy is straight realistic literary fiction about coming of age.
**TRIGGER WARNING – While not containing the direct description of rape, it does describe dealing with the aftermath of rape and includes drug and alcohol abuse.
Guest Post With Laura
Where did this book come from? Why write a book about rape from the point of view of a male witness?
In my story, seventeen year old Ben goes to a high school graduation party and gets far too drunk. He becomes aware that a girl has been sexually assaulted. He was not involved but was too incapacitated by drink himself to help the victim. The day after, he isn't sure what happened. However, he is a conscientious, thoughtful, empathetic teenager and he can't get the incident out of his mind. When he tries to discuss the incident with friends and family, he discovers that no one cares about the girl. Ben finds himself at odds with his family and his upbringing.
The Summer I Went Crazy is Ben's story as he realizes that he doesn't have the same values as his social milieu and he isn't going to be the person his parents what him to be. He has to figure out the right thing to do on his own—and that experiment in independence makes up the majority of the story.
This book grew out of the hearings about the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is the son of a very wealthy man and had been groomed all of his life for a prominent position of some kind—CEO, lawyer, politician, whatever. He also was accused of sexual assault at an unsupervised teen drinking party. The elite private school attended by Kavanaugh and the other teens was notorious for a culture that supported sexual assault. Keg-parties and assaults: Women from Catholic high schools in Washington area break 'culture of silence' (nbcnews.com)
It isn't unusual for situations involving young people and excessive drinking to end up with accusations of sexual assault. Sometimes it's very clear that abuse occurred, but other incidents are murkier and it's much harder to know what actually happened.
Kavanaugh's best friend and drinking buddy was a witness to whatever happened at the high school drinking party. The witness had three choices: testify for Kavanaugh, testify against Kavanaugh, or run away and hide and not testify at all. He chose the run away and hide option.
I got curious about that. Why did the witness refuse to testify one way or the other? The witness was Kavanaugh's alibi. Without the witness, it was a case of “he says, she says.” What was going on in the mind of the witness?
So I wrote a story about a witness. My story is FICTION. The jumping off point, the inspiration, was my curiosity about the witness in the Kavanaugh situation, but I have no way of knowing what really went on in his mind or what really happened at the party so long ago. My story is about imaginary people.
I imagined a teenage boy who lives embedded in a family and group of friends with the security of a feeling of belonging. Then I put him in a situation of being a witness to something deeply shocking, so shocking that he begins to question the values of the people around him and to question his own values and behavior. Ben, shattered and confused, decides to spend the summer away from his family. On his own, he experiments with life, takes risks, and has new experiences on his way to doing the right thing.
Obviously there's a trigger warning! However, the rape is not described and there is no sexual violence or abuse during the rest of the story. There are references to drug use and consensual, affectionate sex.
Laura is an artist who lives on an island with her husband and her two dogs. She has always entertained herself by telling herself stories. As a child, she used to like going to bed because she could lie awake under the covers and run movies in her head. Later, as an adult, she enjoyed long distance driving for the opportunity to spend hours writing novels in her imagination.
Now Laura divides her retirement time between dog rescue, care for disabled people, political activism, and yes, she still tells herself stories while she is driving. Her first book, The Dog Thief and Other Stories, written under the pen name of Jill Kearney, was listed by Kirkus Review as one of the One Hundred Best Indy Books of 2015. She's also the author of I Once Was Lost, But Now I'm Found, Limbo, The Eclipse Dancer, and Wild Hare. She has a story contribution in the book Rescue Smiles, too.
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