Stuck In Neutral by Terry Trueman, Blog Post 1

At first glace, this book seems like one that I would have a really hard time staying interested in but after the first 60 pages I really enjoy this book. The premise of the story makes me really sad, and I find myself having to suppress tears. I don't want to give too much away but basically a boy named Shawn is extremely disabled by cerebral palsy and seizures that have left him brain dead, or so everyone thinks. He is completely unable to speak, feed himself, go to the bathroom by himself, etc. His father who is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for a poem he wrote about Shawn, left the family because he could not take seeing his son in pain everyday. The part that I am on right now is where his father is on a talk show, defending a man who murdered his disabled son. This is leading Shawn to believe that his father wants to murder him, but nobody has any idea that he understands what is going on. Shawn is actually really intelligent and has a photographic memory, but since he is unable to speak, doctors have ruled that his mental age is about 2-3 years old. I am curious to see what happens with his father and if Shawn is able to ever let anyone know that he actually knows exactly what is going on all the time. This book fits really well into the single story that I am exploring, because this shows a lot of instances where people (especially Shawn's father) have passed severe judgement onto him, and just assumed that his quality of life is so horrible, that he might be better off dead. I am looking forward to seeing what else I discover throughout the rest of this book!