Draft2Digital, 2023
This is a short Young Adult (YA) novel aimed at younger readers to help them understand when a serious illness occurs in childhood. It was important to me to write fiction for kids facing health challenges.
Griff, the main character, is diagnosed with a potentially disabling chronic illness around his ninth birthday. There are many twists and turn through his treatment and its aftermath. He is changed in ways he’d never imagined.
“Griff O’Neill may only be in the fourth grade, but don’t underestimate him! Griff has a knack for noticing what people around him are feeling. He has a vibrant inner life made up of images, sensations, and puzzled attempts to uncover life’s logic.”
—Adam Lewis
“It is a touching tale told with great sensitivity. I couldn’t put the book down until I had finished it.”
—Patrick Casement
Psychoanalyst
He was dreaming. Something about a deep, dry well he was supposed to stay away from. This was a dangerous place, marked by a dusty sign with a skull and crossbones. The ground by the well was cracked and hard like cement. Dead vines had withered and turned brown all around the shaft of the well. It looked poisoned. He stood near the edge of the well’s opening, forcing himself to peer down into the dark. A queasy, unfamiliar fear made him shiver. Suddenly, he heard a noisy gasp—loud, heavy, and close. Startled, he opened his eyes.
It took him a moment to figure out what was happening. What was his mother doing in his room with a flashlight in the middle of the night? He wondered if he was still dreaming. Griff shook his head, a jerky movement erasing the poisoned well from his mind. He rubbed his left eye, which itched in a strange way.
He squinted at her in the dim glow of the flashlight. “Mom? What’s going on?”
She spoke with obvious difficulty, since his waking up had caught her off guard. She couldn’t get it out of her mind: the image of his left eye, which wasn’t closed, although he was sound asleep. It had appeared glazed and blank, looking straight up. She wondered how he could stay asleep like this.
She cleared her throat and tried to assure him, “Nothing, hon. Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you. Sorry.”
It was the second time in a day she’d called him “hon.” Something definitely had to be wrong. Rarely was she so openly sweet in how she talked to him, his brother, or his father.
He rubbed his left eye again and blinked extra hard to move some life into it. He touched a crust of dried mucus underneath.
“Leave your eye alone and go back to sleep,” his mother said gently. She held the flashlight pointed downward.
He looked at her and asked, “What are you doing with the flashlight?”