Anderson, Laurie Halse
THE IMPOSSIBLE KNIFE OF MEMORY
New York : Viking, 2014
IL YA
ISBN 0670012092

(2 booktalks)

Booktalk #1

Hayley Kincaid and her father have been on the road for five years. They’ve been running away from their past; from memories that haunt them.  But now it’s time for Hayley to face the past: a history of memories that she’s lost, hidden, or suppressed.  It is the history that torments her father, Andy, an Iraq war veteran haunted daily by his experiences and suffering from PTSD. Each day she deals with the depressing care of her father and yet yearns to have the life of a normal teen.  Somehow Hayley must resolve all of  these personal conflicts.  (Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award, 2015)

Booktalk #2

Hayley Kincaid has a home, which is new and different. For the past five years she had been on the road with her father, who was driving truck. Her father, Andy, thought it was time she went to a real school – and it was time she had a home. However, all was not white picket fences. Both have events from the past that are causing issues. Andy’s are memories from the Iraq war. Hayley does not want to remember the reasons why she and her father went on the road. Hayley is attempting to adjust to her new life; her father is attempting to adjust to PTSD. Each is trying to take care of the other – as well as her/himself. ( Prepared by: Donna Maher, Anderson University, maher.donna@gmail.com   SCASL Young Adult Book Award, 2016)