Purple Day: 5 fiction books for epilepsy awareness day
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Epilepsy Awareness Day
Purple Day, celebrated on March 26, is an international grassroots effort dedicated to raising awareness about epilepsy, a condition that affects 50 million people worldwide making it one of the most common neurological diseases globally. Founded by Cassidy Megan in 2008, this epilepsy awareness day encourages individuals to wear purple and share their stories to foster understanding and support for those living with epilepsy.
Literature can play a vital role in this mission; by immersing ourselves in fictional narratives featuring characters with epilepsy, we gain deeper insights into the emotional and everyday realities of the condition. These stories not only highlight the challenges faced by individuals but also promote empathy and education about epilepsy, breaking down stigma, misconceptions and fears of this neurological disorder.
In honour of Purple Day 2025, here are 6 books that feature characters with epilepsy.
Necessary Lies (2013 Goodreads Choice Award) by Diane Chamberlain
After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm. As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.
Social worker Jane Forrester becomes invested in their struggles while uncovering dark secrets of a small Southern town in the 1960s.
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The Thing with Feathers by McCall Hoyle
Emilie Day believes in playing it safe: she’s homeschooled and her best friend is her seizure dog. Then Emilie’s mom enrolls her in public school. To make matters worse, Emilie is paired with starting Chatham York for a major research project on Emily Dickinson. She should be ecstatic when Chatham shows interest, but she has a problem. She hasn’t told anyone about her epilepsy.
Emilie lives in fear her recently adjusted meds will fail and she’ll seize at school. Eventually, the worst happens, and she must decide whether to withdraw to safety or follow a dead poet’s advice and “dwell in possibility.”
How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets by Garth Stein
Evan had a hit single, but that was ten years ago. Thirty-one now, he’s drifting, playing in a local band and teaching middle-aged men to coax music from an electric guitar.
Beset at a young age with a life-threatening form of epilepsy, he’s kept his condition a secret. But his deepest secret is that he got his high school sweetheart pregnant. Then her conservative parents whisked her out of Seattle and out of Evan’s life.
Now, fourteen years later, he experiences unplanned parenthood when he undertakes to raise the resentful teenage son he’s never known.
Molly Falls to Earth by Maria Mutch
In late January 2010, choreographer Molly Volkova has a seizure on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk.
As Molly experiences the singularity of the seizure over the course of seven minutes, she is haunted by her past: memories of love and infidelity, thoughts of her family and her work, and of the city itself. She also reflects on the disappearance of a lover she last saw ten years earlier, his sister, and the secrets that connect all three of them.
Engraved on the Heart by Tara Johnson
Reluctant debutante Keziah Montgomery lives beneath the weighty expectations of her staunch Confederate family, forced to keep her epilepsy secret for fear of a scandal. As the tensions of the Civil War arrive on their doorstep in Savannah, Keziah sees little cause for balls and courting. Despite her discomfort, she cannot imagine an escape from her familial confines—until her old schoolmate Micah shows her a life-changing truth that sets her feet on a new path… as a conductor in the Underground Railroad.
Three O'Clock in the Morning by Gianrico Carofiglio
Antonio is eighteen years old and on the cusp of adulthood. His father, a brilliant mathematician, hasn’t played a large part in his life since divorcing Antonio’s mother but when Antonio is diagnosed with epilepsy, they travel to Marseille to visit a doctor who may hold the hope for an effective treatment. It is there, in a foreign city, under strained circumstances, that they will get to know each other and connect for the first time.