The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes [Hardcover]

Randi Davenport (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 2010

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An academic and writer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, offers a dense, achingly inconclusive tale about her developmentally challenged son, whose difficulties remain elusively untreatable and largely undiagnosed. Davenport writes poignantly about her increasing sense of helplessness over the years as her son, Chase, moving into his teens, grows harder and harder to manage, from his inability to focus and sit still, to his paranoia and obsession with morbid thoughts, his seizures, to his eruptive agitation and truculence that eventually warranted long-term hospitalization. What was wrong with him? Davenport lists the dozens of doctors' suggestions over the years, from autism and severe ADHD to seizure disorder, psychosis, and schizophrenia. Yet, stubbornly, Chase's diagnosis remains unnamable, and a plethora of drugs often fail him, such as Clozaril, which checked his psychosis but left him vegetative. Chase's indefinable state proves problematic for insurance providers, who cut off his hospital coverage though no long-term care facility will take him. As a result, Chase has to spend a frightening stint at the state mental hospital. Davenport's memoir is intensely thorough and affecting. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Davenport’s painful story reveals how she, husband Zip, and also his physician responded when their son Chase began exhibiting behavioral irregularities as a tot. The doctor’s assessment was that Chase may have had developmental problems but nothing to fret over. Chase entered school, and his difficulties escalated. Teachers requested numerous parent conferences, and Chase was frequently sent home for disruptive behavior. School counselors and specialists couldn’t pinpoint a particular diagnosis that encompassed Chase’s problems. Alternately considered autistic, behaviorally disabled, and more, depending on who was consulted, and because Chase fit into no neatly defined niche, most clinical interventions failed. When he became fully psychotic as a teen, he entered the rabbit hole that is the American mental health care system. It’s difficult to say which is more painful: Chase’s illness or Davenport’s efforts to advocate for him as the by-then divorced, single mom tried to navigate a system full of blind alleys and dead ends. This is a story with which far too many families can probably identify. --Donna Chavez

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books; 1 edition (March 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565126114
• ISBN-13: 978-1565126114
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Advance Praise for THE BOY WHO LOVED TORNADOES

"Randi Davenport's The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes (Algonquin) is about her son Chase's psychotic breakdown at age 15. One doctor diagnosed him as " 'Chase NOS'--Chase Not Otherwise Specified. 'He's a population of one,' " as is this unforgettable memoir of a shattered family, a mother's abiding love, and the frightening permutations of the human mind."--Lisa Shea, Elle Magazine, April 2010

"A heartbreaking, disturbing, and truly courageous story of one mother's fight to save her son."-- Alice Hoffman

"A gripping memoir of motherly love and absolute devotion."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A brave and beautiful story by a born writer. This is a book like a beacon, offering clarity, inspiration, and validation for us all, especially those of us, like myself, who have struggled with serious mental illness in our families...and that's two out of five families in the United States." -- Lee Smith

"Randi Davenport has written a miraculous book about the heartbreak and devastation that occur when her son is diagnosed with severe mental illness. The Boy Who Love Tornadoes is a gripping and deeply compelling book about a mother's search for the proper care and treatment of her psychotic son. Davenport shows us the gritty and enraging reality of our long fractured mental health system, even at the best health facilities. Davenport's exacting and beautifully written story, along with her ferocity and unrelenting determination to help her child, make her a formidable advocate for those afflicted with these cruel and often stigmatized diseases. The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes is the best book I've read about mental illness since Kay Jamison's An Unquiet Mind." --Virginia Holman, author of Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad

"Davenport writes poignantly. . . . [her] memoir is intensely thorough and affecting." --Publishers Weekly

For more reviews and comments from readers like you, visit Randi's website:
www.randidavenport.com


Randi Davenport earned a Masters 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 Quarterly Review, Film/Literature Quarterly, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Women's History Review. She has taught literature and writing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others.

She currently lives in North Carolina with her daughter; the boy who loved tornadoes lives near by.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and Heartbreaking March 19, 2010

By Melisande D. Timblin

Format:Hardcover

When I picked up this book, intending to simply glance through the first few pages, I found myself instantly drawn into Dr. Randi Davenport's finely spun world, and was unable to put the book down until I had finished it. Riveting, painful, and, ultimately, inspiring, this is an incredible book. It is a story worth telling, as well as a story well told.
Davenport has found the courage to chronicle her son's illness without any melodramatic embellishments or overwrought appeals to the reader. Her story is told in a frank, stark, and oddly beautiful style that at once makes her overwhelming love for her children plain, though she does not attempt to paint herself as a heroine or as anything other than a mother struggling to do the best for her kids in an impossible situation.
I have read many memoirs in which forgettable writing is made up for by an interesting story, and others in which a rather boring, ordinary narrative is rendered memorable through the use of skilled writing. This falls into neither of those categories.
The Boy Who Loves Tornadoes is one of those rare memoirs in which a truly captivating story is brought to life by a talented writer. Davenport's prose is spare, gorgeous, and incredibly affecting. This moving story of her son's illness, her daughter's sadness, and the desintegration of their family plays out like a feature film, with characters so well drawn that they appear in the reader's head.
The structure of the book pulls the reader along like a pair of speeding trains, with scenes from the present interspersed with memories from the past, until the two timelines crash together and create one heartbreakingly clear picture of a child in crisis.
This is a book written by a mother about her children and her attempts to do her best for both of them, especially her son, who is diagnosed with developmental disabilities and mental illness. Yet this book will not appeal merely to the parents of children with special needs, or the parents of any children, or to people who love someone with a disability. This book speaks to the humanity and the ability to love that is inside all of us. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever loved anyone else. Period.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Be prepared to be truly moved by this story March 15, 2010

By Gay Perez

Format:Hardcover

This is truly a riveting book. Once I started it, I could not put it down. Everyone has a story to tell or so the saying goes, but none like the story that Randi Davenport tells in her new book, The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes. This author's journey through life as a wife and mother of two children who is forced to face the devastating impact of mental illness in her own family when her husband abandons them due to his own mental incapacity and leaves her alone to raise and care for a daughter and son who has debilitating mental health issues of his own. This beautifully written story is a true testament, in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles, of perseverance, persistence, and positive possibilities for the future. Readers will ride a tidal wave of emotion ranging from love and optimism, to anger and despair, back to triumph and hope for our society. Mental illness can no longer be kept behind closed doors nor can it be the responsibility of the parent alone to care for their family members or maneuver through our health care system. If this book does one thing it reinforces that every child is truly a gift in their own unique way. Each child offers value and worth to the human experience.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A captivating read March 10, 2010

By Virginia Taylor

Format:Hardcover

The writing is beautiful and exquisite. Davenport's honesty enables the reader to find herself in the story, even though the story she tells is uniquely her own. I expected to be drawn in by the story, but the writing has captivated me. She has a gift.