Dusie always knew puberty was going to be confusing, but she never realized it was going to be catastrophic--until she wakes up one morning to find that her hair has turned into a writhing mass of slithering snakes and discovers the real truth about her family: her mother is a Gorgon--right out of Greek mythology--and she was named after her mother's younger sister, Medusa. Her mother had hoped that Dusie's being half-mortal would protect her from inheriting the family curse. Still reeling from this revelation, Dusie tries to keep her snakes under wraps. But after a boy she likes in school almost exposes her, she discovers another family secret--just one look from Dusie's snakes has the power to send someone right into his own personal Stone Age. Talk about "if looks could kill"! Dusie better figure out how to control her snakes and her rage, and find a way to get her life back--before anything else disastrous happens.
NANCY SPRINGERhas published forty-five novels for adults, young adults and children. Her novels from contemporary realism, mystery/crime, and fantasy to her critically acclaimed novels based on the Arthurian mythos. Springer's children's books have won her two Edgar Allan Poe awards, a Carolyn W. Field award, various Children's Choice honors and numerous ALA Best Book listings. Her most recent series include the Tales of Rowan Hood, featuring Robin Hood's daughter, and the Enola Holmes mysteries, starring the much younger sister of Sherlock Holmes. She lives in East Berlin, Pennsylvania.
"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist." I have a rubber stamp declaring those words, and they pretty much delineate my life. Conforming was the thing to do when I was raised, in the fifties. Even my mother, who spent her days painting animal portraits at an easel in the corner of the kitchen, tried to conform via housecleaning, bridge parties, and a new outfit every spring. My father, who was born into a British-mannered Protestant family in southern Ireland, emigrated to America as a young man and idolized the "melting pot" because at last he fit in. Once in a rare while he recited "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" or told a tale of a leprechaun, but most of the time he was an earnest naturalized American who expected exemplary behavior of his children. My mother was a charming Pollyanna who would not entertain negative sentiments in herself or anyone around her. As their only girl and the baby of the family, I was coddled, yet hardly ever got a chance to be other than excruciatingly good.
My "conform" phase lasted right into adulthood. When I was thirteen, my parents bought a small motel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I spent most of my teen years helping them make beds and clean rooms. I did not date until I went to college -- Gettysburg College, all of seven miles from home. it was the height of the sixties, and I grew my hair long, but eschewed pot, protests, and "happenings." Instead, I married a preacher's son who was himself conforming by studying for the ministry. Within a few years I was Rev. Springer's wife, complete with offspringers, living in a country parsonage in southern York County, PA.
Here beginneth the "go crazy" phase.
Because I had never been allowed any negative emotions, I began to hear "voices" in my head. First they whispered "divorce" (not permissible), and later they hissed "suicide". They scared me silly. I couldn't sleep; images of knives and torture floated in front of my eyes even during the daytime; something roared like an animal inside my ears; my wrists hurt; I saw blood seeping out of the walls; panic jolted me like a cattle goad out of nowhere. Is it necessary to add that I was clinically depressed? The doctor gave me Valium and sent me to a shrink. The shrink took me off the Valium and told me I had a problem with anger. (No duh.) The next doctor zombied me on the numbing antidepressants which were available at that time. The next shrink said I had an adjustment problem. And so on, for several years, during which I somehow managed to stay alive, take care of my kids, handle the vagaries of my husband, sew clothing and grow vegetables to get by financially, cook, can preserves, show up at church, do mounds of laundry and publish "The White Hart" and "The Silver Sun"--yet not one of the doctors of shrinks ever suggested that I might be a strong person, let alone a writer. All of them were intent on "helping" poor little me "adjust" to being a housewife, mother, and pastor's wife.
Eventually I became resigned to the fact (as I perceived it) that I was an evil, sinful person with horrible things going on inside my head, and I stopped trying to fix me. I stopped going to doctors or therapists. Somehow I found courage--or desperation--to stop trying to conform or adjust or live a role.
"I am going to start taking an hour or two first thing in the morning to do my writing," I said to my husband.
"Fine," he said. He had reached the point where he would agree with whatever to humor the neurotic wife; to him it was just another of my brain farts. But to me it was the most important sentence I ever spoke. With that statement I stopped being a housewife who sometimes stole time to write, and I started being a writer.
Conform, go crazy--or become an artist.
By becoming a writer--by becoming who I truly was--I became well.
It was so simple. Although it did take years, of course; it takes a long time for good things to grow. Trees. Books. Me. Odd thing about books; they not only nourish growth but show it happening. In "The Black Beast, The Golden Swan" and many other of my early novels, you can see me dealing with the yang/yin nature of good and evil, struggling to accept my own shadow. In "Chains of Gold" and "The Hex Witch of Seldom" I start writing as a woman, no longer identifying only with male main characters. In a number of children's books I come to terms with my own childhood. And in "Apocalypse"--whoa, what a fierce, dark fantasy novel, the first thing I wrote after my income from writing enabled my husband to leave the ministry. I hadn't thought of myself as repressed when I was a pastor's wife, but obviously something broke loose when I shed that role. "Larque on the Wing"--whoa again, another breakthrough book that spiraled straight out of my muddled middle-aged psyche and took me places I'd never dreamed were in me.
It's been a long time since those days when I thought I was an evil person. I know better now, and I love and trust me even to the extent of writing "Fair Peril"--a more perilous novel than I knew at the time, interfacing all too closely with my life. Written two years before the fact, it foresees my husband's infidelity and my divorce. The most painful irony I've ever faced is that once I gained my selfhood, I lost my lifelong partner. He had supported me through episodes that would have sent most men screaming and running, but once I became well and strong, he transferred his loyalty to a skinny, neurotic waif all to similar to the young woman I once was. After supporting him through twenty-seven years of stinky socks, automotive yearnings, miscellaneous foibles, and the career change that put him where she could cry on his shoulder, I found this a bit hard to take. But I wouldn't go back to being Ms. Pitiful. Not for anything.
Now married to a rather remarkable second husband, after living 46 years in Pennsylvania I moved in 2007 to the Florida panhandle, where I spent a year living in a small apartment above the aforementioned husband's hangar in an exceedingly rural (swamps, egrets, snakes and alligators) airport. Now we have a real house about a mile from the airport on higher ground featuring tremendously tall longleaf pine trees with rattlesnakes and scorpions underneath them. Life is an adventure and I mean that sincerely.
Dusie Gorgan, the star of DUSSSIE, never expected puberty to be like this! Maturity brings about startling changes: snakes for hair, for one thing! Nancy Springer deftly weaves substantial mythology into this present day story of Medusa "Dusie" Gorgan, whose absent father is a mortal and whose mother is a goddess. This stand-alone book would be a great stepping stone into Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series or a companion volume for those who enjoyed THE LIGHTNING THIEF. A strong heroine, plenty of humor and a creative (and non-deadly) ending make this great for 'tweens.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
It's official: Dussie is going crazy - 100% certifiably crazy. Or ... at least she hopes she is when she wakes up to find a mass of twenty-seven ssslithering, hisssssing sssnakes atop her head. Gross, right? But normal if you're a part of the Gorgon family. It seems that every Gorgon girl who's entered womanhood has entered it with her very own snakes. Dussie gets that it's tradition, and genetic but why her? Couldn't this have skipped a generation?! Why now, why smack in the middle of puberty? Why? Because of her dear deceased aunt: look-her-in-the-eye-and-you'll-be-turned-to-stone Medusa. Isn't it bad enough that Dussie has to carry the killer Gorgon's name, but now she has to carry around the killer curse too?!
This may be normal, but there's something about Dussie's snakes that are vastly different. Sure, they slither and hiss like most other snakes, but they talk to Dussie, telepathically. All day, every day Dussie's head is clouded with 27 snake voices - complaining, motivating, questioning, pleading for a story - it's all very annoying, and strange too.
Nothing good can come from this. She's tried everything to get rid of her new-found "pets". She's tried freezing them, she's even contemplating cutting them - but she doesn't want to hurt them (she's not that mean) or herself for that matter. In a desperate need to clear her mind and figure thing out, Dussie does the one thing that always helps: hitting the streets of Manhattan for a nice stroll. But that stroll turns disastrous when she bumps into Troy, the cutest boy around and the object of Dussie's affection, and accidentally turns him into a breathing stone statue. Oops! She didn't mean to do that, it just sort of ... happened. Doomed! Dussie's doomed to be a snake head her whole live, a snake head who can't possibly leave the house.
Or is she? Little by little, with the help of family and a new-found friend, Dussie slowly comes to terms with her new life, and her new pets. As she takes the time to learn about her snakes she learns more about herself. Day by day she begins to find both beauty and acceptance in her snakes, and more importantly in herself. But will this be enough to rid this evil burden from her life? Is this really a burden? Does Dussie really want to get rid of her snakes?
Nancy Springer has written a one of a kind story and has managed to breath new life into a story already told. The story of Greek gorgon Medusa has never been so laugh out loud funny as Springer has made it. Short, sweet, and well written Dusssie is a heartwarming story of the trial and tribulations of entering womanhood and finding yourself within the craziness normally called puberty.
Dusssie will have readers at the edge of the seats (im)patiently waiting to see what's going to become of their soon to be favorite character. Dussie is not only a believable character, but she's easily relatable, especially to anyone who has gone through, lived through, and has survived puberty. Springer has managed to summon all those awkward feelings/emotions one experiences during this time and really capture the truth in them, and makes us (older) readers see there's a bit of snake head in us all.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
In the vein of The Percy Jackson series. This book has a female protagonist, Dussie, who grows snakes on her head, in place of her hair. She is the half human niece of Medusa. The story opens with her getting her period, a turn off for any self respecting young male reader. Apparently,the becoming of a woman is what triggered the change into her half gorgon self. The story does have its own flair, though, if the reader can get beyond the Percy Jackson comparison. The characters are likable and funny. The plot has its own twists and challenges for the heroine. Dussie's coming of age is unique and touching. She even grows to appreciate her mother!! It also takes place in New York City. I enjoyed this book and will recommend it to my female 6th grade students. Older girls might not be into the story. Boys would like it if it weren't for the whole period thing on the first page. I wouldn't even try to convince them. I laughed out loud in some parts.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
