Teen Suicidal Ideation: Sensitive Subject Explored in Fiction
Teen Suicidal Ideation: Sensitive Subject Explored in Fiction
As I ready the publication of Deadly Little Secrets paperback edition, I’m doing what I did not do well in 2013 when we published this novel in ebook format only; finding my readers. It’s a fulltime job!
RNs, all of them former colleagues of my narrator, are at the helm of this story and depended upon to advance the plot to its next ‘fork in the road.’ So yes, I’m zooming in on the nursing communities.
Though not a Y/A novel, Deadly Little Secrets has a strong Y/A/Teen link; two supporting characters are seventeen year old high school classmates who’ve known eachother since toddlerhood. One of them becomes quite troubled. Readers learn why as this story unfolds.
So yes, I’m zooming in on teen suicide.
I’ve discovered noted American author Jodi Picoult rather recently, not from her vast body of work, but from her voice. She’s been getting a lot of grief from the book banning community and her reactions, spoken publicly, embody everything noble about what it means to identify oneself as a ‘writer.’
As per my usual, once I fall in love, I love everything about that author, which means I’ve read several of her highly researched novels that tackle tough issues. The PACT, her fifth novel published in 1998, centers on teen suicide. It’s such a complicated subject to develop via story. In this audio, she discusses public reactions to this novel, the very good to the very bad.
Suicide was the subject I explored in graduate school, deeply enough to write my thesis on teen suicide and the lack of services for them. All these decades later? Little has changed including the rate at which teens kill themselves. Alarmingly high.
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