Book Review: American Girl by Wendy Walker

Charlie Hudson has worked hard her whole life not only to get by, but to live up to her mother’s high-flying aspirations for her. It’s not easy growing up in a small town like Sawyer, Pennsylvania. Sawyer’s particular mix of unyielding social prejudices makes life difficult not only for a teenage mom having a baby out of wedlock – like Charlie’s mom once was – but also for anyone struggling to make a better life for themselves. Charlie knows that the only way to get out of Sawyer is to go to a good college, and she’s been working at the Triple S deli since she was fourteen in order to be able to afford it.

While she views most of her co-workers as close friends, if not outright family, there is one person there that no one likes: the boss, Clay Cooper. Charlie is grateful that he took a chance on her when she was younger, especially now that she’s eighteen and has been squirreling money away in her college fund for years, but she’s not oblivious to the kind of person he is. Coop is one of Sawyer’s biggest employers, and he will not hesitate to lord that power over any of the people who depend on him for a living:

This is another way I think of Clay Cooper. With one hand, he gave you a job. With another, he stole your dignity, your pride, your something or other. No matter the employee, with that second hand, he always took away the one thing that should be more valuable than money. But it can’t be when you need to feed four children, with one [ill] like Ollie, or when you need to pay for college, or support your sick grandmother.

When Coop is found dead in his driveway one morning, the entire town is shocked. It quickly becomes obvious that he was murdered, and that the list of people who hated him enough to want to kill him is a mile long. Charlie just wants to keep her head down and keep working, in hopes that the investigation into his death will soon blow over, but a security camera Coop had secretly installed in the Triple S shows that Charlie was hiding in the deli on the night that he was killed. Worse, it’s readily apparent that she at least heard, if not outright witnessed, some sort of violent altercation between Coop and a mystery figure.

In an act of either courage or foolhardiness, Charlie refuses to speak with the police about what happened that night. They can’t compel her to talk, especially after she lawyers up, but when federal agents get involved, everything gets way more complicated. Charlie only wants to protect her friends and get the hell out of town. What will she do, however, when it’s both her own life and the lives of those she loves on the firing line?

Charlie is such a compelling heroine, a person with autism who isn’t portrayed as either a robot or hopelessly naïve but as a whole individual with conflicting desires and inclinations. Telling the story from her point of view helps readers, especially the neurotypical, better understand the neurodiverse. As Charlie explains about one of her own coping mechanisms:

I began to form rules like math equations. When this happens, people act that way and say those things. When that happens, people act this way and say other things. And those rules stayed in my head, each and every one. I realized I could use them to prepare for whatever was coming. To protect myself.

 

My mom went on to tell me I was like a lopsided seesaw, and this image gave my feelings a home inside my head. A shelf to sit on. A box to live in. I didn’t know the box had a name and that the name was Autism until I was eleven. It was a relief, but also a burden I would carry forever. Like if she’d told me my nose was too big or my eyes were set too close together. I would never again be able to think that I was the same as everyone else.

The way Charlie learns to embrace her differences, and use them not only to keep herself out of (too much) trouble but to protect her loved ones as well, makes for a fully realized portrait of a young woman with autism who learns how to stay true to herself even in the most unimaginable circumstances. Some books about people on the autism spectrum have the unfortunate habit of portraying them as less than, whether socially or morally (or, in some particularly annoying cases, both.) American Girl, on the other hand, is a wonderfully nuanced tale with a sympathetic heroine whose honest, clear-eyed assessments of the world can only enrich the lives of this book’s readers.

Read More: Review of Don’t Look for Me