Lightning Song - Softcover

Leroy Dearman, age 12, lives on a llama farm, and life is pretty much perfect. It's true that his grandfather just died in the attic and wild dogs stalk the baby llamas. It's true that one little sister curses him and the other one wets her pants. Mostly, though, life is right out of 'Looney Tunes.' No wonder the llamas greet each sunrise with a song. Enter Uncle Harris, roaring up in his new red sports car. He's separated, dressed to kill, full of jokes and new ideas. Romance itself. Harris sets himself up in the Dearman attic with a telephone, a TV, a tasseled lamp, and a stack of "Playboy" s. The day Leroy avails himself of the centerfolds, life on the llama farm changes forever. It's like Leroy's been struck by lightning. Or love. He sees things he never noticed before -- his daddy's embarrassing withered right arm, the way his mother blushes around Uncle Harris. (Leroy thinks he knows why Uncle Harris and his mother want him to go to baton twirling lessons with his sisters; he thinks he knows why they want the house to themselves.). That summer, the Dearman farmhouse fills right up with electricity. The atmospheric pressure of family life shifts and lightning indeed strikes. But the lightning also sings.

Lightning Song Is Hilarious, high-risk fiction that walks the wire between vision and vertigo.

Leroy Dearman is twelve, and he lives on a llama farm in Mississippi when Uncle Harris arrives in a sports car, full of new ideas. He sets up a pretty grand bachelor pad in the attic, with a telephone, a TV set, and a stack of Playboy magazines. He is, you might say, Romance itself.

And life on the llama farm takes on an entirely different flavor. Electricity fills the house. Equilibrium tilts, lightning strikes, and Leroy finds himself kissing his innocence good-bye.

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