Nonfiction

The Burn Journals

I don’t want to get out of bed.
I’m so stupid.
I did so many things wrong.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m going to be in so much trouble.
What am I going to do?
I’m completely screwed.

In 1991, fourteen-year-old Brent Runyon came home from school, doused his bathrobe in gasoline, put it on, and lit a match.

He suffered third-degree burns over 85% of his body and spent the next year recovering in hospitals and rehab facilities. During that year of physical recovery, Runyon began to question what he’d done, undertaking the complicated journey from near-death back to high school, and from suicide back to the emotional mainstream of life.

In the tradition of Running with Scissors and Girl, Interrupted, The Burn Journals is a truly remarkable book about teenage despair and recovery.

BRENT RUNYON WAS 14 years old when he set himself on fire.

This is a true story.

In The Burn Journals, Runyon describes that devastating suicide attempt and his recovery over the following year. He takes us into the Burn Unit in a children’s hospital and through painful burn care and skin-grafting procedures. Then to a rehabilitation hospital, for intensive physical, occupational, and psychological therapy. And then finally back home, to the frightening prospect of entering high school.

But more importantly, Runyon takes us into his own mind. He shares his thoughts and hopes and fears with such unflinching honesty that we understand—with a terrible clarity—what it means to want to kill yourself and how it feels to struggle back toward normality.

Intense, exposed, insightful, The Burn Journals is a deeply personal story with universal reach. It is impossible to look away. Impossible to remain unmoved.

This truly riveting memoir is a spectacular debut for a talented new writer.


From the Hardcover edition.

Getting Ready (Sign About)

Teens & Suicide (Gallup Youth Survey: Major Issues and Trends)

Teen Suicide (Just the Facts)

Teen Suicide (At Issue Series)

Everyone agrees that teen suicide profoundly impacts families, schools, and society, but debate still rages over what causes it and how to prevent it. In this anthology, authors explore the psychological, societal, and physiological forces that may lead teens to commit suicide, as well as the most effective strategies for preventing it. (20020801)

Teen Suicide: Too Young to Die (Issues in Focus)

The Power to Prevent Suicide: A Guide for Teens Helping Teens

Suicide (Opposing Viewpoints)

Suicide (Psychological Disorders)

Coping with Teen Suicide (Coping)

Coping with Teen Suicide is a self-help book for you, if you are a teenager. It is designed to help you or your troubled friends cope with stress, frustration and depression and to help you not commit suicide.

Some teenagers--and not other teenagers--are on the path to suicide or at the door of suicide. Those on the path to suicide have difficulties coping with stress, are depressed, turn their anger at other people against themselves, are preoccupied with the idea of death, give themselves only one of two choices, have unresolved grief over deaths in their family; and/or are influenced by family and friends to be self-destructive.

This book helps you, a teenager, not only get off the path to suicide and not kill yourself but also helps you get on the path to a happy, fulfilling, satisfying life and want to live. The four "F's" on this path are: (1) Feelings--finding constructive ways to express all of the human emotions and feelings, (2) Friends--developing many different kinds of friendships, (3) Functioning--doing something that you think is interesting and that society pays you to do, (4) Faith--believing in something that gives you a positive meaning and purpose to your life.

Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends of teenagers and those who work with teenagers may also obtain help from this book. If you have lost a loved one through suicide, there is a chapter in this book to guide you through the grief process.