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Abby Furlowe has plans. Big plans. She's hot, she's popular, she's a cheerleader and she's going to break out of her small Texas town and make it big. Fame and fortune, adoration and accolades. It'll all be hers.
But then she notices some spots on her skin. She writes them off as a rash, but things only get worse. She's tired all the time, her hands and feet are numb and her face starts to look like day-old pizza. By the time her seventeenth birthday rolls around, she's tried every cream and medication the doctors have thrown at her, but nothing works. When she falls doing a routine cheerleading stunt and slips into a coma, her mystery illness goes into overdrive and finally gets diagnosed: Hansen's Disease, aka leprosy.
Abby is sent to a facility to recover and deal with this new reality. Her many misdiagnoses mean that some permanent damage has been done, and all of her plans suddenly come tumbling down. If she can't even wear high heels anymore, what is the point of living? Cheerleading is out the window, and she might not even make it to prom. PROM!
But it's during this recovery that Abby has to learn to live with something even more difficult than Hansen's Disease. She's becoming aware of who she really was before and what her behavior was doing to others; now she's on the other side of the fence looking in, and she doesn't like what she sees. . .
Darkly comic but ultimately touching, Confessions of a Teenage Leper is an ugly duckling tale with a surprising twist.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 11, 2018 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780735262621
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780735262621
- File size: 1421 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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July 1, 2018
Seventeen-year-old Abby feels like life is going well until a red patch on her leg refuses to clear up.Abby's life is on a pretty good trajectory until she discovers she has Hansen's disease, also known as leprosy. Suddenly, everything she thought was important--being a pretty, popular, naturally blonde cheerleader--is replaced by having to deal with erupting skin, numb feet, headaches, sore joints, and traveling away from her family to receive medical treatment. As her world unravels, however, her views on what's important in life begin to change, and the loss of friends, cheerleading, and popularity begins to seem not that bad. The shame she feels at having Hansen's disease becomes easier to understand as she learns about the long history of discrimination against Hansen's patients. Unfortunately, Little (Niagara Motel, 2016, etc.) drives these self-discoveries home relentlessly, and the characters tend to feel more like symbols of thematic growth than actual people. Little weaves a wealth of interesting research into her descriptions of the disease and the treatment center, which grounds the tale in authenticity. A subplot involving Abby's brother, Dean, and his coming to terms with being gay offers another interesting diversion. The book follows a white default.An unusual twist on the typical sick teenager story. (Fiction. 15-18)COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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