Insane Circumstances — Brenda Smith

Brandi L. Brown hears the fate of a college student who experiences hazing and is leaving the college because it is more than she can bear. Images of the distraught young lady evoke memories of her own college days, ones that had lain dormant for a couple of decades. She leaves work with the intent of writing a letter of consolation to the university student who is returning home. Under the watchful eye of her husband, she begins to tell her own story.
The protagonists own story takes place during early integration, and she is among the first colored students to get a scholarship to Claxville University. Her parents do not want her to attend, but she does. While at the university she does experience some hazing and other acts that support her parents arguments about her being unable to succeed at the college.
There are also wonderful experiences and good friends to be had, an interracial relationship with a fellow university student (one that is brief, but poignant, passionate, and one that she cannot tell her parents about.) Brandi also has a chance meeting with a taxi driver who proves to be more than thatThaddeus Jerome Pennington becomes her friend, that listening ear that she needs, and soon is the love interest and support she needs to continue at the school.
The story has chapters like the Bus Ride, which tells of her trip to the school; Wash Day Folly in which some girls in the dorm steals her underwear from the laundry room; Cross Cultural Comparison Class (CCCC) which starts out comparing romance languages and culture, but soon turns to a comparison of Brandis culture with that of her classmates; and Flo, which helps the reader know who Taxi really is. Insane Circumstances has twenty-two chapters which aid the reader in knowing Brandis story and comprehending how it would serve to help the injured girl. Each action causes a reaction; some that she is proud of and some that she is not so proud of.
When the story begins, it is Brandi Leigh Browns story. As events happen, the male character (Taxi) frequently appears. Soon, the novel becomes her story, his story, and their story. In spite of the acts of hazing, etc., she does succeed. She does graduate, and marry this man who becomes her friend for a lifetime. And Thaddeus is there to support her when she writes the letter to the girl she had seen on television, the one who enacted all the memories that lay dormant for so long.
Insane Circumstances starts with the desire to write a letter of support to the girl who experienced hazing, and ends with the actual letter.