In Search of a Happy Ending (Mary Strand)

This month at YA Outside the Lines, we're supposed to talk about EITHER crushing/heartbreak OR world issues.

For many of us in the United States right now, it's all intertwined.

But I'm writing this as an author, particularly an author of YA (young adult) novels, so I'll try to nudge this in that direction.

Good novels, regardless of genre, are filled with emotion: tension, sorrow, pain, joy, heartbreak, love, you name it. And in most of them, the Big Black Moment toward the end of the novel is CHOCK full of anguish, despair, and heartbreak.

And then, somehow, miraculously, there's a happy or at least hopeful ending.

This isn't just romance novels. It's mysteries, thrillers, you name it.

But in each case, you have to get through the heartbreak to get to the happy ending.

I'm not personally a fan of crushing blows, heartbreak, or despair. I'm guessing most of you aren't, either. The nonstop insanity of our current administration, which is firing people, shipping them off to jail or other countries, taking away fundamental rights, ignoring our Constitution, violating court orders, ruining lives, and on and on, is something I don't want to think about. It's depressing, and I don't play well with depression. I'm supposed to put on my own oxygen mask before helping others, after all, and my oxygen mask doesn't seem to be working.

I desperately hope that there's a happy ending at the end of this, but this isn't fiction. And even if there is, it feels like it'll be the sort of happy ending found in a dystopian novel: some people will still be standing, but it'll be among the rubble of a fallen world, and not everyone will make it.

I don't write dystopian fiction, but we're living in an increasingly dystopian world. (Or country, at least.) Heartbreak surrounds us, and it's weighing me down. I SO admire and applaud those who are making their voices heard and taking even greater actions. If we ever scrape together a happy ending from this rubble, it will be because of you.

But in truth, it needs to be because of all of us. Including, yes, me.

Mine will likely be a quieter voice than that of the people I most admire, but it's time to make myself heard. In whatever way I best can.

I hope you'll take action, too. In YOUR way. Let's take back our country and our lives.

Mary Strand is the author of Pride, Prejudice, and Push-Up Bras and three other novels in the Bennet Sisters YA series. You can find out more about her books and music at marystrand.com.