The New Coming of Age

First kisses. First loves. First rejection. First time experimenting with [fill in the blank]. First time knowing how to actually apply and wear eyeliner. Once you’ve passed the test of puberty and scaled the morbid walls of middle school, high school is often hailed as the “coming-of-age” period in an individual’s life. At least so much is the case in fiction, familiarly referred to as Young Adult–a popular catch-all for novels with teenaged protagonists that draw both teen and adult readers alike. 

And yet the average high school student is still enjoying the last guaranteed years of living in their parent/guardian’s home rent-free. Often, their meals are paid for and prepared by elders. Their iPhones are purchased on the family plan and they are still nestled in the safety of their birth nests. College is no different. Just with less adult supervision. 

It’s the years beyond the boundaries of undergraduate degrees and meal plans where things get interesting. Where real decisions have to be made and consequences faced head-on. 

Enter the world of the New Adult.

When I finished my undergraduate degree at 22, I decided to pack up my two-door Honda Civic and my four-pound Chihuahua and drive across country from Boston to San Diego, eating ramen noodles and deli meats out of a cooler in my backseat as I traveled. I lived in a motel for a week with my college roommate until we found a tiny bungalow by the beach that was under construction, which we begged to live in even as they continued to paint and repair the walls.

The landlord agreed to have us and so we found what would be our home–cockroach cameos and all–for the next year. I miraculously found one of the only full-time jobs as a newspaper reporter (yes, they still existed back then) in the city and we met a whole new group of friends quicker than I could even begin to work on my tan. 

We were poor and drank too much and broke up with our boyfriends from back home to pursue unstable and less meaningful relationships with beachy boys who surfed (or pretended to). We cried on the nights we were lonely or homesick or heartsick or hungover. We worried about how to pay rent and stay skinny and find connection in a place where the sun and bleached hair and parties never ended. We were entirely on our own. 

This felt like the real coming-of-age period in my life. This was the time in which I made real mistakes that had to be learned from. A time when all the things I was so sure I knew about myself were unequivocally challenged and then had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

In fiction, the term New Adult was coined sometime around 2009, and it is meant to include novels that focus on the struggles and circumstances of readers aged 18-30. And it is here, in the New Adult category where the stakes of one’s “coming-of-age” moment are much higher and grittier. After the confines of the parental home and college are left behind, many individuals find themselves ostensibly standing at the edge of the cliff of life, trying to make real decisions for the first time about career, home, and love.

My debut novel, The Way You Burn (She Writes Press, 2020), explores this time in twenty-five-year-old David’s life when he challenges the creature comforts of his collegiate experience to try roughing it for a year in a remote cabin in New Hampshire that he inherits from his late grandfather. Here he attempts to understand the complicated past of his girlfriend, Hope, and unravel the webs of secrets kept hidden by the family he thought he knew. 

In this exploration of the New Adult, David undergoes his big “coming-of-age” moment when he learns what we all learn in that brief and beautiful time in our life–the boundaries of our capabilities and the true depth of the human heart.

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CHRISTINE MEADE: Christine Meade is a writer, editor, and educator. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the California College of the Arts. A native New Englander, Christine currently lives and writes outside of Boston, MA. “The Way You Burn” is her first book, to be published by She Writes Press in April 2020. To learn more about Christine Meade’s life and work, visit her website, https://www.christine-meade.com.

 

THE WAY YOU BURN

When David approaches his New Hampshire cabin one cool October night to find it engulfed in flames, he knows his girlfriend Hope set the fire. At least, he’s pretty sure he knows.

David first decides to upend the creature comforts of his post-collegiate life and try roughing it for a year after he inherits two acres of land and a rustic cabin from his deceased grandfather. Life at the cabin proves to be more difficult than expected, however, and it all starts with the woman he loves―Hope―whose dark past is written in the twisting pink scars covering her body. Their relationship is challenged after his car slides through an intersection one dark night and, later, his realization that someone is out there, watching him through the trees.

Over the course of five seasons, David struggles to maintain his relationship with Hope. Ultimately, in an attempt to understand the sacrifices she has had to make, he decides to rewrite their story. In doing so, he explores the lessons he’s left with–after everything he thought mattered is gutted or burned away―and the surprising bits of wisdom he finds in the ashes.

 

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