Jailene

Continuing with my series about Characters and Issues in the novel with the working title of N3:

N3 takes place in the Spring and Summer of 1987 in Seattle.

Jailene(pron. highlene) is thirteen, unflatteringly realistic about her father, Graydon Britton – who last-strawed his truncated marriage to Lostine by giving her VD shortly after Jailene was born. Why would he do that? Bears cannot be controlled; they whiz where they want to.

Lostine cannot be controlled – nor Jailene.

During N3’s Summer, Jailene is working on the same mansion restoration project as N3’s narrator – Chet. Even though her mother is financing the restoration project, Jailene independently takes the bus to work every day. She never skips school; neither is she ever late for work at the restoration site. Her first day on the job, her mother trusts Chet to train her daughter re-pointing the vast, convoluted brick & stone exterior of the 1880s mansion.

When Jailene realizes Chet is the same, now grown-up boy her mother has bit-by-bit tried to describe to her over the years, she becomes afraid for her mother’s battered heart, fiercely warning him off Lostine.  

And yes, there’s a reason Jailene is spelled that way. One day, at an LAX concourse sandwich place, on the name tag of a very cute girl of possibly sixteen – I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing what I read as a direct warning - “Jailene”. Introducing Jailene in N3, I thought immediately of Lostine wanting to protect her baby daughter from birth.