The Edge of Brilliance
by Susan Traugh
Genre: YA Contemporary Realistic Fiction
Release Date: July 19th 2016
Finch Books
Summary from Goodreads:
Volatile and unstable, Amy stands at the precipice. Will she fall into the chaos and despair of insanity or ascend into brilliance and redemption?
Amy Miles is fifteen and crazy. Or, at least that’s her greatest fear. Her severe bipolar disorder, with its roller coaster manic and depressive episodes, is ruining her life. Yet in Amy’s mind it is accepting the pills and therapy—not the disease—that will brand her as ’crazy’.
When Amy lands in a residential psychiatric program, she befriends take-charge Mallory and the two create family and try to salvage the shards of their broken minds. There, Amy discovers that her illicit drug use has robbed her of her ability to dance and she is forced to weigh how hard she is willing to work to reclaim her lost talent and potential. But, despite a promising beginning, when Amy falls back into denial, the tragic consequences cannot be undone.
Amy is left to decide whether to give up altogether or accept her diagnosis and the tools she needs to battle her disease, to learn to dance again and forge a new and improved version of herself. Will she step up to the edge of her brilliance and shine?
Reader Advisory: This book contains strong language and also includes scenes involving drug use, rape, violence. This book also includes a frank exploration of mental illness and loss of autonomy.
by Susan Traugh
Genre: YA Contemporary Realistic Fiction
Release Date: July 19th 2016
Finch Books
Summary from Goodreads:
Volatile and unstable, Amy stands at the precipice. Will she fall into the chaos and despair of insanity or ascend into brilliance and redemption?
Amy Miles is fifteen and crazy. Or, at least that’s her greatest fear. Her severe bipolar disorder, with its roller coaster manic and depressive episodes, is ruining her life. Yet in Amy’s mind it is accepting the pills and therapy—not the disease—that will brand her as ’crazy’.
When Amy lands in a residential psychiatric program, she befriends take-charge Mallory and the two create family and try to salvage the shards of their broken minds. There, Amy discovers that her illicit drug use has robbed her of her ability to dance and she is forced to weigh how hard she is willing to work to reclaim her lost talent and potential. But, despite a promising beginning, when Amy falls back into denial, the tragic consequences cannot be undone.
Amy is left to decide whether to give up altogether or accept her diagnosis and the tools she needs to battle her disease, to learn to dance again and forge a new and improved version of herself. Will she step up to the edge of her brilliance and shine?
Reader Advisory: This book contains strong language and also includes scenes involving drug use, rape, violence. This book also includes a frank exploration of mental illness and loss of autonomy.
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Interview with Susan Traugh
What inspired you to
write The Edge of Brilliance?
As I watched my own teenaged daughter
struggle with severe bipolar disorder, I was struck by the great heroism she
showed in accepting and fighting the most devastating aspects of her disorder. Too often, society sees these survivors as
ill-behaved, out-of-control young people who need to ‘buck up’ and ‘straighten
up.’ They’re thrown to the curb as delinquents and drug addicts. But, I saw a
hero of mythic proportions slaying a dragon of enormous power and destruction,
and I wanted to chronicle the journey of one such hero. (Reader exclusive: pay
attention in the book; you’ll find it follows the traditional hero’s journey of
mythology.)
I also believe that open, honest
discussion of mental illness is one of the next important tasks for our
society. We no longer live in an age where there is ‘no hope’ for those who
suffer from mental illness. In fact, with therapy in all its forms, it is
possible to live an ‘ordinary’—or even an extraordinary—life. That needs to be
said, loud and strong, with no embarrassment and no stigma for both sufferers
and society as a whole, to hear. People with mental illness have much to offer
our world and we do ourselves all a disservice by relegating them to the
sidelines instead of encouraging their talent and contribution.
Can you tell us a
little bit about the next books?
Because of my daughter’s mental illness
(which is shared by her older sister), and because birds of a feather seem to
flock together, I am surrounded by extraordinary people—but people who live
‘outside’ society’s mainstream. I believe that my job in life is to speak for
these people. My next book is Coco’s Cry, and this time, I speak for
transgendered individuals and the people who love them. In 2014 Leelah Alcorn,
a transgendered girl, committed suicide and, in part, blamed her Conservative
Christian parents because they didn’t accept her. This event created a lot of discussion with
the transgendered young people whom I consider my friends and, ultimately, led
to the question: “What happens when everybody does what they think is right and
it turns out so very wrong?” What if
there really were no ‘bad guys’ in this story, but instead, earnest people
simply doing the best they knew how? And, Coco’s
Cry was born. I’m still shopping this book, but will let you know when it
has a publish date.
Can you tell me a
little bit about the characters in The Edge of Brilliance?
Amy Miles is the main character in this
story. Once a GATE student, and a gifted dancer and singer at her school, her
life gets turned upside down when bipolar disorder strikes her in her teens. As
the roller coaster of mania and depression send her emotions skyrocketing one
minute only to crash and burn the next, Amy’s behavior becomes more and more
erratic and more and more self-destructive. Desperately wanting to be a ‘normal
teen,’ Amy refuses the therapy and medication that might help her cope with her
disorder and instead, like so many mentally ill young people, self-medicates
with pot, ecstasy, and pretty much anything else she can get her hands on. That
behavior makes her vulnerable to sexual assault and her own erratic behavior
that eventually costs her her friends, her family and her freedom. The
Edge of Brilliance explores Amy’s struggle to combat her demons as she
journeys to health and wholeness, and the hero she finds within herself along
the way.
My favorite author?
No doubt, Ellen Hopkins. Ellen’s books
touch that raw, unspeakable place where mental illness, drugs, dysfunction and
tragedy intersect. Her poetry just reaches in and grabs at your heart—sometimes
to caress it, sometimes to rip it out of your chest. There’s a reason the woman
has so many New York Times best sellers! She also began her writing career at
an older age (like me) and seeing her success gives me hope for my own future
and provides me with a role model and guide.
If you could
time-travel, where would you go?
In a heartbeat, I’d been in Paris of the
1920’s. I’d love to share a table with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, T. S.
Elliot, Salvador Dali, Josephine Baker...oh my gosh! The art, the music, the
writing—the clothes! Now, I’m a pretty shy person and doubt I’d even have the
nerve to speak to people of such enormous talent and presence, but I’d even
love to just sit there and drink in the energy of all that talent in one place.
Woody Allen’s movie, “Midnight in Paris” is one of my favorites as it addresses
just such a fantasy—of stepping into the past and the wonder of a night at the
salon. If you haven’t watched it, do so. It’ll give you an idea of this
remarkable period in history. So, yeah, if you find a time machine, I’ll slick
my hair, roll my stockings down and head right out to make some “whoopee.”
Do I have any fuzzy friends?
Yes, I do. And while my daughters promised
me that, if I let them each have a pet I’d “never” have to take care of it, I
seem to be the primary caregiver for Lily and Cassie. Lily is affectionately referred to as “the
B—“ as she has been one cranky girl since she was a kitten. Now, approaching
old age, she has let any pretense of civility fall by the wayside and gone for
straight-ahead cantankerous. The one and only game that appears to give her
great joy is to tease the dog. Cassie is a two-year-old Sharpei/Pit-bull mix.
She’s in-your-face loveable and can’t understand why the cat won’t play with
her. We’ve got a baby gate to keep them apart—rare interface usually leaves
Cassie’s nose scratched and bleeding and living room furniture knocked over in
a path of destruction—but it doesn’t stop Cassie from hanging on the gate ten
times a day, whining and beating her wagging tail against the wall, calling out
“Come play with me!” while Lily hisses and jabs at her from around the corner!
About the Author
Award-winning author, Susan
Traugh, has been writing for over thirty years. Her Daily Living
Skills workbooks are used in classrooms all over the world and her
stories have appeared in periodicals nationwide along with several stories
in Chicken Soup for the Soul. With husband, Steven,
Susan won Learning Magazine's Teachers Choice Award for Mother Goose
Brain Boost.
Now, Susan is venturing into
the world of young adult fiction. Her latest novel, The Edge of
Brilliance is an exploration into the heroes found within
struggling young people. The manuscript was a finalist in the San Diego Book Awards. Today,
Susan lives in San Diego, CA with her husband and daughters, a cat, dog, fish
and near her grown son who doesn't visit enough.
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