Trigger 

By Susan Vaught

Trigger Warning. This story contains extremely sensitive content. 

This story by Susan Vaught, has become one of my absolute favorite books of all time. 

    This story takes place after a very traumatic event for the main character, Jersey Hatch. We don’t know him before this event, we have no idea of who he used to be, and we don’t meet him after he wakes up and starts his recovery. 

We meet him after all of that, after three+ hospital stays and all of the family therapy and occupational and physical therapy sessions. 

We met him as he reenters the world.

At first, the plot seems to be geared towards figuring out what happened to him. We know he’s coming home after a horrible accident that took the vision of his left eye, his control of the left side of his body, and a hole in his brain. He retained most of his awareness and ‘smarts’ but his ability to read social cues, and control and organize his thoughts was affected. He describes himself as “A five year old genius”. 

He can form correct sentences when he focuses, but sometimes what he was thinking about tumbles out of his mouth before he can stop it.

We soon find out that what had happened hadn’t been an accident. Jersey Hatch had shot himself in the head. 

The story shifts to him trying to figure out why he had shot himself in the first place, why he had tried to end his life. 

Jersey had made a lot of ceramic bowls and vases during his hospital stays, and he made a lot of these as gifts intended for Mama Rush, who was a friend of his grandmother. On his way to her house, the ceramic gifts fall and get broken.

These broken gifts are very symbolic of Jersey’s recovery. He made them in different hospitals, like he made progress getting his speech back and learned how to dress and feed himself and function with one bad arm and leg. 

Mama Rush and he started meeting every Saturday, and she gave him a list of possible reasons for why he did what he did, and he was supposed to explore all of the reasons until they found which was the cause. She also mended each gift, such as the ashtray, and piggy bank, showing the mending and progress that Jersey was making. However, a few items were unsalvageable, showing that things would never be the same, no matter how hard either of them tried. 

Mama Rush served as a mentor and a point of reference for Jersey. She leveled with him, treated him like he was a person, not a piece of glass just waiting to shatter. She made him understand that he had shot himself, to own up to it, and figure out why. 

This story shows all of the ugly afters. Jersey lost all of his friends from school, and he saw the damage it had done to his parents. His mother had to leave, and his father tried to hold the family together, like the gross glue-like oatmeal had made for breakfast everyday.

The end of this story brings the whole story together. Jersey finds the weapon that he had used, Mama Rush was in the hospital, his mother had left, and he was home alone. He finally figured out why he had shot himself, and now knew how to do it right.

Only, he doesn’t. He chooses to live, to make things right, and that is said and also symbolized in Mama Rush taking pieces of the ceramic bowls that couldn’t be fixed, and making a suncatcher with them, showing that something beautiful can come from the broken pieces. 

Vaught did not dance around the bush with this story. She said the ugly truth of how it is, and that adds to the feeling of the book. This is a story about hope. Jersey made a bad choice, and now he had to live with the consequences, but he decides he is going to live with them, and make the best of the broken pieces, he will live his life catching the sunshine, even if he has cracks and scars.

:)