Unsinkable Cayenne: Author Guest Post with Jessica Vitalis
Jessica Vitalis' own life inspired her historical fiction novel-in-verse, Unsinkable Cayenne, available on October 29. Read on to hear about her story and why she felt it was important to share with middle grade readers today.
Saint Bernards aren’t exceptionally common dogs, and that was certainly true in the small Wyoming town my family lived in back in 1987. So it came as a real surprise when twelve-year-old me, out walking my Saint Bernard, George, and minding my own business, spotted a kid walking my way––with a Saint Bernard in tow! Not just any kid. A boy. With muscled arms and golden curls and beautiful brown eyes. I was a small, shy kid who generally tried not to draw any attention to myself. But this boy! Middle school was about to start, and he seemed about my age. Would he be in any of my classes? As he drew closer, I built up my fledgling courage. Perhaps I’d say hello, and he’d say hello back, and maybe one of us would say something about the other’s dog, and soon we’d be “going out” (as we used to say back then), and we’d probably eventually get married.
I wish I could tell you things went as planned. But as the boy approached, right when I was opening my mouth to force out a greeting, George ruined my life. He took a giant dump right in front of my future husband!
To say that I was mortified would be an enormous understatement. Looking back, I have no idea if the boy even noticed, but in my memory, he wrinkled his nose, crossed the street, turned the corner, and never looked back.
It turned out this boy was in several of my classes. And, rumor had it, he also had a crush on me. But I found that hard to believe. I was the girl who lived in the dilapidated house up on the hill with a marijuana-laced garden in the front yard instead of grass. I was the girl whose parents drove around town in a beat-up Willy’s Jeep (when it could be bothered to start) rather than a shiny station wagon. I was the girl who wore second hand clothes and didn’t have a television or a phone or anything else the “normal” kids had. So I did what I had to do to protect myself from what was sure would only result in heartbreak, if not humiliation and ridicule: I stayed as far away from this boy as possible, and when he passed along a message via our friends to meet him under the bleachers at a football game to talk, I said I wasn’t interested.
This crush inspired my next middle grade novel, Unsinkable Cayenne, a historical verse novel publishing October 29th, but ironically, it’s not what the story is really about. Sure, young readers will squeal and groan as George poops in front the gorgeous new boy, and they’ll root for the main character, Cayenne, who longs to catch the new boy’s attention.
But this incident only serves to set up the heart of the story: why didn’t I––and why doesn’t Cayenne––feel deserving of a “rich” boy’s attention?
To explore this theme, I set Unsinkable Cayenne in 1985 and centered it around the discovery of the Titanic wreckage. This was before James Cameron’s infamous “Titanic”, and I wanted to dig more deeply than his fictional love story anyway. Instead of focusing on romantic relationships on board the Titanic (fictional or otherwise), I used a teacher’s obsession with the Titanic’s discovery to explore the social dynamics on the boat—social dynamics that Cayenne finds reflected in her own life.
In 1912, being third-class meant you were likely to drown when your ship went down (though the third-class passengers weren’t locked below deck as many people believe). In 1985, being third-class meant you didn’t have the Swatches and sneakers and fancy lunches all the other kids had, and you certainly weren’t part of the “cool” crowd. In 2024, the amount of money you have––the amount of money your family has––still has an enormous impact on the middle school experience. And if you are a kid who comes from a poor family with strange parents, fitting in is all that much harder. It’s my hope that Unsinkable Cayenne* will help young readers from unique background feel seen––and perhaps even teach them that being “normal” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
About the Creators
Jessica Vitalis is the author of The Wolf’s Curse, The Rabbit’s Gift, and Coyote Queen. She is a full-time writer with a previous career in business and an MBA from Columbia Business School. An American expat, she now lives in Canada with her husband and two daughters.
Jessica Vitalis is offering free 20-minute virtual Q&A sessions for any classes that read Unsinkable Cayenne together during the 2024-2025 school year. Contact her at jessicavitalis.com to schedule. (A teaching guide is also available on the website.)
About the Book
When her unconventional parents finally agree to settle down in one place, twelve-year-old Cayenne’s dreams come true—but the reality of fitting in is much harder than she imagined. Acclaimed author Jessica Vitalis crafts an unforgettable historical novel-in-verse about belonging, family, and social class, for fans of Lisa Fipps’s Starfish and Jasmine Warga’s Other Words for Home.
As Cayenne enters seventh grade, her parents decide it's time to stop living in their van, roaming from place to place. Cayenne hopes that this means she will finally belong somewhere and make some friends. But it turns out that staying in one place isn’t easy at all.
When her social studies class studies the Titanic tragedy (the wreckage has just been discovered and her teacher is obsessed), Cayenne sees more and more parallels between the social strata of the infamous ship and her own life. Will she ever squeeze her way into the popular girls’ clique, even though they live in fancy houses on the hill and she lives in a tiny, rundown home with chickens in the front yard? Is it possible that the boy she likes actually likes her back? Can she find a way to make room for herself in this town? Does she really want to? Maybe being “normal” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Set in the mid-1980s, this literary novel is for readers of Megan E. Freeman’s Alone and Erin Entrada Kelly’s We Dream of Space.