Turnabout (novel)
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- For the 1931 novel by Thorne Smith, see that author's article.
Turnabout is a novel by Margaret Peterson Haddix, set in the future. It was first published in 2002 by the Aladdin division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
[edit] Plot summary
It was the year 2000, and Amelia Hazelwood was living in a nursing home. She was sick and had given up on her life. She was content to let her sons make all of the decisions for her, and she was ready to die. Then the doctors at the nursing home had her sign something. She wasn't quite sure what it was she was signing, but she signed anyway. Things began to change. One day she finds she doesn't need her hearing aid anymore. Amelia can swing her legs over the side of her bed again. Some people who live in the nursing home can walk again instead of being confined to wheelchairs. Amelia learns that what she signed was an agreement to participate in a study of an experimental drug that would reverse the effect of aging. Everyone at the nursing home has taken the drug, and they are all growing younger every day.
Things seem wonderful--it's a second chance at life! Then, on her first birthday back in time, Amelia realizes that she can't remember the last year of her life growing older.She also learns that the Cure must be kept a secret because it's illegal. The nursing home residents realize that once they start growing younger, their memories of growing older disappear; they are rewritten with the new memories of growing younger. One man is afraid of forgetting his beloved wife's funeral where so many people said such nice things, and he is the first to request the Cure, the drug that will halt his age at that exact moment. The Cure has worked wonderfully in lab mice. But when this man takes the Cure, he immediately shrivels up and dies.
Amelia decides not to stick around very long in this place with the doctors and the other old people getting young. It is too frantic, too upsetting. Instead she and a friend, Anny Beth, decide to go off and live their lives together, experiencing the world a second time as they both grow younger and younger. However, they then get toward the end of their new lives. Amelia, now calling herself Melly, is sixteen and still growing younger. Anny Beth is eighteen. Soon they will not be able to live on their own. What will happen when they are toddlers again? They will need someone to take care of them. Thus begins the search for someone they can trust with their story and their lives.
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