Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

Dutton Books for Young Readers

978-1-101994580

256 pp.

Ages 12-18

March 2016

It's not unusual for me to add graphic elements to my image of a book cover to enhance it and perhaps provide the reader with a little hint about the book. I could not do that disservice to Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston as the book's emotional story deserves to have its superb cover unadorned by my trivial efforts.  Exit, Pursued by a Bear needs to be left with a starkness that attests to the nature of the story within because

Everything about this is unfair. (pg. 131)

Teen Hermione Winters is off to cheerleading Camp Manitouwabing with best friend and co-captain Polly, boyfriend Leo and the rest of the Fighting Golden Bears, Palermo Heights high school’s squad, along with their coach, Alexandra Caledon.  As she will be entering her senior year after camp, Hermione whose positive attitude is as bright as her future intends to make this, her last cheer camp, the best for all involved. At the first bonfire, when squad captains share what their teams need to overcome, Hermione talks of two curses the school has: that each graduating class, since the death of Clara Abbey in 2006, will lose one person to a drunk driver, and that every year one girl at school gets pregnant.

“…I do think it’s life’s way of reminding us that nothing should be taken for granted, that things might take a turn in ways that aren’t fair or don’t make sense.” (pg. 23)

It’s an amazing camp of hard work, meeting new people and fun, though Leo is in a perpetual cranky mood for the lack of time he gets with Hermione.  Then, at a dance, Hermione is drugged and raped and left in the lake.  Awakening in the hospital, she has to be told what has happened to her because she has no memory of the attack.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear is Hermione’s journey of emotions and waiting and introspection and compassion.  Hermione may be a flyer on the cheerleading team but she is fully grounded in herself and her caring of others and what she believes.  As much as she is convinced that she is a changed person when she returns from camp, she truly isn’t.  The rape, and subsequent pregnancy and abortion, and search for the rapist do not change the force that makes Hermione a leader and a flyer.  Even through her sessions with the indomitable Dr. Hutt, Hermione does not come across as traumatized or broken.

That’s the first time I’ve thought of myself as broken.  Polly won’t let me, I don’t think, but everyone else seems to expect it.  And maybe I am.  Maybe this would be easier if I acted like I am broken.  Then they’ll be able to fix me.  You can’t fix something that doesn’t know it’s broken. (pg. 81)

She is hardly self-absorbed–though she should be allowed to be–often worrying about how her trauma is affecting her best friend, her teammates, her parents, her psychiatrist, even the OPP officer that is handling the criminal investigation.

Take a deep breath before you read E. K. Johnston’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear.  It’s strenuously moving, both dispiriting and uplifting, as Hermione and her team of family, friends and strangers as well as the reader are taken from the trauma of a rape through the healing process, including an unlikely return to the scene of the crime, before tumbling to a finish that is fair and astonishing.

Stained

by Cheryl Rainfield

Harcourt Children's Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

978-0-547-94208-7

304 pp.

Ages 14+

Release date October 1, 2013

Reviewed from advance reading copy

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Meadows has always focused on the port-wine stain that covers the right-side of her face, determined to get the surgical treatments so that she might become "normal".  The debilitating impact she has experienced because of it has compelled her to live vicariously through her comic character, Diamond, to hide behind a curtain of hair, and to only hang out with other social outcasts. But the very day she is to start treatment, her father learns that someone has embezzled so much money from his graphic design company that there isn't enough to pay a bank loan and her surgery.

At school, Sarah has to share this unexpected news with her group of friends: Charlene who is overweight and the brunt of her father's verbal abuse; Gemma, a lesbian; and Nick, who is considered a geeky "doughboy" by others, though Sarah considers that,

"They don't care that he's kind, smart, and good natured, and sort of cute in a soft, chubby way, with messy, sandy hair that's always falling into his eyes and a quick smile. All they see is his weight and his social awkwardness." (pg. 15)

When Nick narrates a chapter, he emulates the same sentiments about Sarah, calling her beautiful and wishing she could see how amazing she is.

On the way home, a bullying incident has Brian Gormley, her dad's cute assistant, coming to her rescue, offering to help and drive her home.  Though she declines, feeling that "Something isn't right" (pg. 35), Brian grabs her, drugs her and locks her away, with a padlocked leather blindfold on.  He claims that he will help her and her parents by giving them "freedom from the pain in their lives" (pg. 84) as he has done for others.  Thus begins a tortuous imprisonment of months in which Sarah endures physical, sexual and psychological abuse at Brian's hands.  Worse is Sarah's ignorance of the efforts being made to find her, especially by Nick and her parents, with the duplicitous Brian even offering assistance.  Nick becomes relentless in pursuing every lead possible, outdoing the seemingly ineffective efforts of the police.

Throughout Sarah's imprisonment, she attempts to understand Brian's motivations, determined that she would not "let Brian's lies become my reality." (pg. 154) As she attempts to appease him, Sarah is actually becoming emotionally stronger, learning how to handle him and manipulate situations as she can. It's ironic that the very manipulation Brian accuses Sarah of instigating to derive guilt from her parents is a skill she develops courtesy of his abuse. Though he may see her as becoming weaker and submissive, Sarah continues to look for any means to save herself, recognizing that she "has to get herself out, not wait for someone to save her." (pg. 179)

Cheryl Rainfield has courageously admitted that she has drawn on her personal experiences to write Stained (see original Stained release announcement ), emphasizing the positive attributes of courage, perseverance, and self-reliance rather than on the trauma.  This becomes self-evident from the tag line for the book,

Sometimes YOU have to be your own hero.

But just as important is self-acceptance, as Sarah, Nick and her friends learn.  They might all see the "better side" of life for those who are beautiful or slender or popular, but a crash course in introspection makes them realize the superficiality of those attributes and the absence of any relationship with goodness.  The beautiful Brian Gormley is a prime example of a revolting inside to an oft admired exterior.  Sadly for Sarah, this lesson must come at the cost of her freedom.

Not an easy read, Stained will have young adult readers both cringing for the physical, sexual and emotional abuse Sarah must endure and cheering for her efforts and determination to survive, recognizing that her Stained face has only been masking, temporarily, the hero within.

___________________________________________

Look for posts shortly regarding Cheryl Rainfield's book launch for Stained and her take on improving body image.  In the meanwhile, check out Cheryl Rainfield's video explaining why she wrote Stained  here on YouTube.