YA Mystery/ Youthful Sleuths/Edgar Award Winner: Double Helix by Nancy Werlin

Summary

Eli Samuels is smart, top of his class, but when he graduates high school, he wants to take a year off before attending college.  Eli's dad doesn't approve of his plan, but Eli's mom is dying of Huntington's disease, and Eli knows that her medical costs have put his dad in a financial crisis.  Eli wants to earn the money for college to take the pressure off of his dad.  When Eli gets an amazing job at Wyatt Transgenics working for the famous Dr. Wyatt, he's blown away by his luck.  His dad, however, is livid.  It seems that Eli's parents have a past connection with Dr. Wyatt, something that happened before Eli was born. It's clear that Eli's dad hates Dr. Wyatt, and Eli is caught in the middle. In addition to these troubles, Eli is haunted by the possibility that he, too, could fall victim to the horrors of Huntington's disease.  Eli can take a test to see if he will develop the condition, but does he really want to know?  What is his dad hiding? What could Dr. Wyatt have done that was so horrible and what does it have to do with Eli and his mother and her disease?  Nancy Werlin's Double Helix will raise as many questions as it answers about science and genetics and responsibility. In a modern world of endless scientific possibilities, this novel is a must read.

Review


Ok, I'm thinking like an English teacher again, but this novel would be a great modern title to pair with Frankenstein.  The whole question of genetics and the debate over scientists playing God could be discussed with both works, and students could compare the treatment of those issues in the two different time periods.  Plus, Double Helix is a great novel, and students would love it, so it might hook them into enjoying Frankenstein a bit more.  This would also be a perfect book for a media specialist to recommend to teachers in the science department for the students to read and discuss or even to offer as an extra credit--or even better, do some kind of collaborative project about the novel with an English class. I also think that the question Eli faces as to whether he should be tested for the Huntington's gene or not is a really interesting one for any reader to discuss, but it would really be timely for teens today to think about this possibility because more and more advancements in genetics are going to be made during their lifetimes, and they will likely be faced with these types of decisions for themselves personally or for their children or both.  Having just had a baby, I had to consider whether I wanted to pursue any genetic testing with my daughter or whether, as they say, ignorance is bliss.  I pretty much went the ignorance-is-bliss path, but it's a decision that every parent faces these days and one that shouldn't be taken likely.  Outside of the genetics debate, their are some interesting issues about family dynamics brought up in the novel that many readers would identify with, such as Eli's desire to pay his own way through college because he knows that his father has put everything he has into his mother's care.  That's a great deal of responsibility for someone Eli's age to bear, but there are teenagers all over the world today dealing with similar and much worse problems, so I think these topics would spawn so great discussion in a classroom or simply between readers enjoying the book as pleasure reading.

References

[Cover art for double helix]. (2009). Retrieved

     from http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/

     double-helix-nancy-werlin.html

Werlin, N. (2004). Double helix. New York: Dial.