Heat Lightning

Set in a small town, Heat Lightning chronicles a summer in the life of two sisters who lost their parents in a boating accident as babies and have been raised by their aunt ever since. Told from the point of view of Mole, 11 years old, it traces the steady unraveling of the mythology that she and her 12-year-old sister have created to explain their parents' life and death. Their aunt's reluctance to discuss the tragedy in anything more than the most cryptic, fragmented terms has given rise to secret fantasies and has unified the sisters in their devoted quest for buried truths. But this summer will be different, as a subtle transformation and the intercession of strangers disturbs the delicate tripartite balance between the two sisters and their aunt. In moving, sensual prose, Cohen captures perfectly the powerful alchemical transaction through which childhood is transformed into adolescence -- and lives are forever altered.