Summary

Ever think that there is just no one out there who has it worse off than you? Meet Steve York. His parents are divorced, he lives with his father, whom he resents, he finally falls in love, but she goes for another man (the teacher they most respect, nonetheless) and he has so given up on school that he has turned to drugs. But one man thinks that maybe there is still something of Steve York's life to be salvaged. Rats Saw God follows Steve York, through his senior year of high school. He is simply trying to graduate. After spending the majority of his junior year at a new school and mostly stoned, Steve is now at the mercy of the guidance counselor, DeMouy, to see if he’ll graduate. DeMouy gives him an ultimatum: write a 100-page paper anything, and he’ll graduate. Steve decides to open wounds that have never really healed and write about his past. It almost feels like a past life. Through this paper, which the reader reads piece by piece as Steve writes it; we get to see how Steven’s interactions with friends and family really lead him to the spot he is in as a senior and where he wants to be after high school. Steve York is the son of famed astronaut Alan York, and because of that, it’s all anyone knows him by. Steve is tired of his identity being tied to his dad, so he begins to rebel. He joins a group at school called GOD, Grace Order of the Dadaists, a group bent on rebelling against any order in society. Through this group, he meets some of his greatest friends, Doug, Veg, Missy, as well as the girl who will soon be the love of his life, Dub. Dub, which is short for ‘W,’ which is short for Wanda, is a perfect match for Steve. She’s sarcastic, witty, smart, and they spend the majority of their sophomore year head over heels for one another. All of that changes when they both enroll in a creative writing course. Sky, the cool teacher who lets them call him by his first name, has all of their respect and is actually teaching them literature that they like. However, things start to fall apart when Dub starts pulling away from Steve, and starts gravitating towards Sky. Now Steve has to come face to face with who he really is now that Dub is gone. He must decide if he is going to go back to his dead end friends from GOD, relinquish the fight he’s been fighting his whole life an accept his role as Steven York, the astronaut’s son, or if he’s going to look deeper inside to discover who he was truly meant to be. While in California Steve meets his mother’s fiancé, sister’s boyfriend, and his next girlfriend who is the Valedictorian at his high school. They spend the last half of their senior year together and a majority of their summer together before they agree on a split that keeps them friends and makes seeing one another again not awkward.