Saving Jasey

Deborah Dowson is a Canadian children’s librarian living in Powell,
Ohio.

For Gavin, the beast in the shadows is his father’s anger and his
older brother’s rage. He tiptoes through the house hoping not to
awaken the lurking violence. But the beast does not sleep, and Gavin
constantly endures belittling, bullying, and abuse. The violence
escalates as his brother, caught up with drugs, loses all control. With
no hope of help from his depressed, ineffective mother, Gavin finds a
sense of comfort and normalcy at the home of his best friend Trist. But
even in this seemingly perfect home, the beast is lurking in the form of
a suicide and the threat of inherited Huntington’s chorea disease.

Ultimately, not everything that is broken can be fixed, and while there
is hope for Gavin and his friends, his brother Burke succumbs to the
terrible beast.

As the narrator, Gavin offers the reader a wide open view of his heart
and the acute perspective of the artist who is sensitive to others and
always visually aware. The prose is terse, clean, and minimalist, but
full of visual impact (e.g., “Mom was so pale her skin looked like
skimmed milk”). The plot exudes tension and foreboding from the
opening sentence and is contrasted perfectly with moments of quiet
optimism until the suspense results in an intense scene of violence.
This powerful book shows a great deal of insight and sympathy for the
problems of human life. Highly recommended.