What We’re Reading

Sisters in Sanity | Gayle Forman

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Brit Hemphill’s life takes a turn from somewhat manageable to hellish under the guise of a family trip to the Grand Canyon, which in actuality turns out to be a one-way trip for Brit to Red Rock, a Behavioral Modifcation Boot Camp masquerading as a Residential Treatment Facility. Clueless as to why she’s been sent away, and to this place of all places, Brit is not eager to comply to the rules or be easy for the people now holding her captive. Only after some friendly, if biting advice from a Level Six she doesn’t know, does she relent, and earn the beginning of her freedom by achieving Level Two.

Therapy with Dr. Clayton is a sham, at best, and Brit has nothing to say. She doesn’t know why she’s there, doesn’t consider being a teen to be a disorder, and doesn’t want to talk about her mother, who went Schizophrenic a few years ago, at which point her and her father’s lives fell apart. She’s had three years to deal with that, and doesn’t see the relevance. And she certainly doesn’t see what Dr. Clayton could have to say about it, especially since she isn’t even a Doctor.

And so it goes. Group Therapy consists of hurling insults until the victim breaks down, exercise is manual labor, the food is horrible, and a catch-22 for those with eating disorders. The overweight will never achieve any sort of progress while eating the food provided, and will be reprimanded if they don’t. The one highlight, the hikes, aren’t, as they’re really more like death marches. If not for her friendship with some of the other inmates, Brit would have been lost long ago. Even with the Divinely Fabulous Ultra-Exclusive Club of the Cuckoos behind her, Red Rock is still sometimes too much to take. And when their group gets disbanded, assigned new roommates, put under surveillance, Brit isn’t sure she’s going to make it. Not until Martha goes missing, and a girl named Pam gives Brit the true story, which the counselors will cover up, is she galvanized into action.

Brit, together with her sisters, and on the outside, Jed, and two ex-Red Rock employees, begins to build her case. At first she thought it was as easy as finding someone to tell their story. But he wouldn’t listen. So they get all the proof they can. And even then, when she shows up in person to deliver it to him, he writes her off as a spoiled kid. It seems like all is lost. Red Rock will continue on, breaking girls and calling them healed, sending home those without money, and milking those with it for all that they’ve got.

Or maybe not.

Dedicated to misunderstood girls everywhere, this is a harsh but beautiful look at how wrong we can go with the best of intentions, and how even the most backward situations can bring us to the realizations we’ve been needing to make.

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