THE BOY WHO LOVED TORNADOES: REVIEW AND COMMENT

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THE BOY WHO LOVED TORNADOES
BY RANDI DAVENPORT

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Randi Davenport’s story is a testament to human fortitude, to hope, and to a mother’s uncompromising love for her children.

She had always worked hard to provide her family with a sense of stability and strength, despite the challenges of having a son with autism and a husband whose erratic behavior sometimes puzzled and confused her.

But eventually, Randi’s husband slipped into his own world and permanently out of her family’s. And at fifteen, her son Chase entered an unremitting psychosis—pursued by terrifying images, unable to recognize his own mother, unwilling to eat or even talk—becoming ever more tortured and unreachable.

Beautifully written and profoundly moving, this is the heartbreaking yet triumphant story of how Randi Davenport navigated the byzantine and broken health care system and managed not just to save her son from the brink of suicide but to bring him back to her again, and make her family whole. In The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes, she gives voice to the experiences of countless families whose struggles with mental illness are likewise invisible to the larger world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Randi Davenport received her MA in creative writing from Syracuse University as well as a PhD in literature. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in publications like the Washington Post, the Ontario Review, the Alaska Review, and Film/Literature Quarterly. She is the executive director of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

REVIEW:

Randi Davenport poignantly shares her story as a mother fighting for what is best for her son, Chase, in THE BOY WHO LOVED TORNADOES. With a steadily growing sense of helplessness over the years, Davenport labors with her developmentally delayed son, trying to find the best possible doctors, setting, and care for Chase.

THE BOY WHO LOVED TORNADOES goes from his early years when Chase started showing signs that he was delayed to the more recent battle to find an appropriate service for him. The confusion involved in holding the state accountable for what they needed to provide for Chase was made even more difficult by the fact that doctors couldn’t agree on what was actually happening with him. Chase was labeled with an multitude of diagnoses over the years but none of them seemed to be defined well enough to explain everything that was going on with him. When his symptoms changed, getting better or worse, often as a result of different stimuli, his doctors couldn't explain it. Davenport had to fight insurance companies who refused to pay for treatments, as well as deal with treatments that actually made her boy's condition worse.

Randi Davenport also worries about her daughter and how she’ll endure all this unpredictable family chaos. Davenport tries to make it up to Chase’s younger sister, Haley, because she sees the toll Chase’s illness has taken on her but knows that she can only make a dent in it and never fully replace the normalcy Haley has lost. She is also concerned with a possible genetic inheritance as she tells of the mental health problems her ex-husband went through that are much like some of the issues Chase deals with.

This is a memoir of a mother and the caring, frustration, love, and despair she goes through to try and care for her children. Readers will become involved in the emotional memoir of Randi Davenport. Due to her determination and perseverance, it does give a glimmer of hope as you read of the chance Chase has to live a life as unrestrained as possible for him to live, not zoned out from drugs, not locked up like a criminal, but cared for and making progress at his own speed. THE BOY WHO LOVED TORNADOES is a remarkable as well as terribly moving memoir I know mothers especially won’t want to miss.

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