Burned & Smoke

Ellen Hopkins writes in free verse and prose that connects with your soul or your unconcious mind. She writes to the human in all of us - seldom straying from the trials and tribulations of existing - with a tendril of intimacy as if she's speaking to each one of us.

In her book Burned, the main character suffers at the hands of her family in both physical and emotional ways. Centered around Pattyn - young, Mormon, and devilishly afflicted by human desires (don't boys want to kiss you?) - Burned tells the story of the realities of life.

Life does not treat us fairly. The things we want aren't always meant for us. We are not always who we think we are. The people we choose as family and those who raise us mold our perception of the world, but Pattyn doesn't let her father - the patriachal head of the family - tell her who she is or who to be. Because of that, she's shipped off to her Aunt's home for the summer (who also refuses to listen to Daddy-o). She falls in love under a hot Nevada sun and on the back of a horse with a cowboy beside her.

And though the whispers of love highlight their future like a pair of lights flashing over a Hollywood premiere, Pattyn's first love ends tragically and it is nearly impossible to consider what you'd do if you were her.

Losing the love of your life, the child and life you created with that love, and your family in one fell swoop in the passenger seat of a get-away pickup truck that tumbled down the mountain side. Plunging Pattyn into solitude, raped of love and family, stripped and raw.

I know there's a sequel that helps show that her hardship is not continuous. That's actually not a true statement. Hardship is continueous, but the waves of gentility, of calm, and the tides of contentment and happiness do exchange kisses with the shore. Her time comes, and Pattyn is happy and finds her place in the world, but I think it's so important to learn from her story that happiness is only a feeling. We feel it, and it leaves us, and we feel it again someday but it is up to us to find happiness, choose it, and chase it.