The Burn Journals

In his memoir, The Burn Journals, written for young adults, Brent Runyon tells the story of his suicide attempt at age fourteen. Runyon recalls putting on a gasoline-soaked bathrobe, stepping into the shower at his childhood home, and lighting himself on fire. The story takes place in the year following his suicide attempt, from 1991 to 1992, telling the story of his physical and emotional recovery in various hospitals in the DC metropolitan area.

Runyon is the author of three books for young adults. The Burn Journals, his only memoir to date, was the first, published in 2004. He also wrote Maybe and Surface Tension: A Novel in Four Summers. The Burn Journals was nominated for a Georgia Peach Award for Young Readers. Runyon is also a regular contributor on the popular radio program This American Life.

Runyon begins by describing the events that lead up to his last suicide attempt. He is fourteen years old, living in Falls Church, Virginia. He hates himself for what he sees as a number of small failures, which add up to a hopeless life – he likes the same girl that his best friend likes, he has attempted suicide a number of times and failed, making him feel stupid and hopeless. When he sets a locker on fire, he faces disciplinary action, which he sees as just another failure to add to his long list. He decides that day to say goodbye to a few close friends, take the bus home, and complete a final, dramatic act that will cleanse him of all the memories of his many failures. He douses the bathrobe in gasoline and sets himself on fire.



Runyon realizes as soon as he sets the fire that he has made a horrible mistake. Luckily, his brother is home, and when Runyon stumbles out of the bathroom in flames, his brother calls 911 and helps him put out the fire. He is rushed to the nearest emergency room. Despite their fast action, Runyon sustains third-degree burns on 85 percent of his body. He spends the next year in two different hospitals – the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, where he receives extensive treatment for his wounds in the Intensive Care Burn Unit, and the DuPont Institute in Wilmington, Delaware, a rehabilitation hospital where he spends three months.

The majority of the story describes the fallout from Runyon's suicide attempt and the intensive psychological and physical treatment he receives. He sees dozens of therapists who offer glimpses of his eventual recovery. Runyon does not include the benefit of his own hindsight in the book but instead tries to capture the mindset he had at fourteen. The book is written in the angry, confused voice of a lost fourteen-year-old boy, and so the many hospitals, rehab centers, and therapist's offices that Runyon finds himself in offer new commentary and a new glimpse at the recovery process. Eventually, after months of treatment, Runyon realizes gradually how deeply his parents love him and how much he has to live for.

The book ends with Runyon describing the struggle to return home after months in recovery. He writes about the strangeness of returning to a place that is both so different from when he left and so startlingly similar, and how he had to re-acclimate himself to the same environment with his new outlook on life. Runyon apologizes profusely both to his parents and to his brother, Craig, who found him after the incident; his process shows the reader a story of survival after major depression, and how love and acceptance of oneself can lead to growth at any age.



Though Runyon's memoir is a dark one, exploring both the harrowing medical details of his injuries and the challenges of treating major depression in adolescents, his relatable narrative voice and the hopeful recovery that takes place over the course of the book make this a powerful read for children suffering from depression and anxiety. Runyon explores what it means to survive through his slow process of recognizing his own flawed view of the world. The book follows a trend in young adult literature and memoirs of the late 1990s and early 2000s, taking on more mature themes in an effort to create a dialogue about the real-life struggles of millions of children nationwide facing mental illness, trauma, or abuse. Runyon's fiction, particularly his 2006 novel, Maybe, continues these themes, exploring the struggles that young boys face to express their feelings and cope with life, death, grief, and anger.