Catherine Bristow Letter - Autism Asperger Books

P.O. Box 23173

Shawnee Mission, KS 66283-0173

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Meet Catherine Bristow

Catherine Bristow

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Hello Everyone,

Growing up with Tourette Syndrome, I often felt alienated and socially awkward, as a variety of physical tics and obsessive thought patterns interfered with my ability or inclination to absorb social customs and norms. In many cases, I tried to model appropriate behavior from books, but the books I was reading didn't exactly lend themselves to what I asked of them.

For example, Jane Eyre is great reading on a stormy night, but it just doesn't offer practical advice for a fourteen-year-old high school student in Philadelphia. As an author myself now, I set out to make this book great reading combined with practical life advice. Can we all be Charlotte Bronte? Probably not. But we can inform and entertain at the same time.

In My Strange and Terrible Malady, readers may see themselves in Ronnie or Hannah. They may want to change certain behaviors as a result, or they may decide that their own, and Ronnie's, behaviors are unique and individual and perfectly fine. Or they may decide to make some changes in the future. All these are potential options. Only if the reader closes the book and tosses it onto the coffee table, muttering, "No, sir, I just don't get it," will I feel I have not done my job as a writer.

In the end, my hope is that the reader on the spectrum will understand that he or she is not alone. This is the most important lesson due to the importance of feeling part of a community whose members struggle with a common challenges. Based on this knowledge, the reader may then absorb the secondary lesson-that he or she can choose to join the even wider circle of socially adept teens (with some practice and support).

Sincerely,

Catherine Bristow

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Excerpt is taken from Chapter 1 of My Strange and Terrible Malady by Catherine Bristow.

Asperger's.

"It doesn't do any good to sulk," says Mother in a reasonable tone. Mother is always reasonable. Mother is sane, reasonable, beautiful, intelligent, witty and insightful. I'm a jerk. Forever and ever, amen.

I've been a jerk as long as I can remember. If you ask me for examples, as Mother often patiently does, it's really easier to point at my life tout ensemble, so to speak, and ask you to pick out any spot where I'm not engaged in being a jerk.

Mother always goes for the year I volunteered as a reader at the hospice. But that doesn't count because I only volunteered to get close to Randy Goldstein, who was assigned to another floor already the first day. The only one who ever talked to me was the old fat woman who changed the bedpans. And I wasn't a very good reader anyway from always holding my breath because of the funny smell in there. So I don't believe the hospice is such a shining moment in my history.

Right now I am slumped over in the front seat, passenger side, with my head against the window in the jerkiest, sulkiest position I can contort my body into. Mother is driving, just waiting for me to give her an opening so she can leap in and turn everything the doctor said was black into white. And at home my brother is blissfully ignorant of how soon he will be deep into making up jokes that contain the word "assburger."

"It's not even a girl's disease," I mumble into the side of the car door.

"What?" says Mother, while expertly scoping out where the sudden noise of a siren is coming from.

"I have to be the one girl in the universe to get this disease. I'm an anomaly."

"That's not what he said, Ronnie." Mother smoothly pulls over to let the wailing ambulance by. Not like when I had to pull over for an ambulance during driver's ed. I got so panicked people were shouting helpful directions from nearby cars. "And it's not a disease."

"Oh."

"It's a syndrome."

"Really."

"Which has up until now been under-diagnosed in women. So there could be a lot of other girls feeling the same way but not understanding why. In a way, we're lucky."

"Don't say."

She gives up. One thing about Mother, she knows when to hold her fire. Am so liking the "we" part incidentally - the old "all for one and one for all" mentality.

We drive on, two binary opposites encased together by a blue Toyota: Lynette Baker, perfect parent, and Ronnie Baker, reported girl child of sixteen with just what it takes to click on the teen scene - boy's name, boy's haircut and now a nifty new boy's disease. Oh pardon me, syndrome. I elaborate.