The Handbook for Lightning Strike Sur..., Michele YoungStone
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Sur..., Michele YoungStone
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The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors
A Novel

Author: Michele Young-Stone

Narrator: Coleen Marlo

Unabridged: 10 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/03/2010


Synopsis

BECCA

On a sunny day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, eight-year-old Becca Burke was struck by lightning. No one believed her—not her philandering father or her drunk, love-sick mother—not even when her watch kept losing time and a spooky halo of light appeared overhead in photographs. Becca was struck again when she was sixteen. She survived, but over time she would learn that outsmarting lightning was the least of her concerns.

BUCKLEY

In rural Arkansas, Buckley R. Pitank's world seemed plagued by disaster. Ashamed but protective of his obese mother, fearful of his scathing grandmother, and always running from bullies (including his pseudo-evangelical stepfather), he needed a miracle to set him free. At thirteen years old, Buckley witnessed a lightning strike that would change everything.

Now an art student in New York City, Becca Burke is a gifted but tortured painter who strives to recapture the intensity of her lightning-strike memories on canvas. On the night of her first gallery opening, a stranger appears and is captivated by her art. Who is this odd young man with whom she shares a mysterious connection?
When Buckley and Becca finally meet, neither is prepared for the charge of emotions—or for the perilous event that will bring them even closer to one another and to the families they've been running from for as long as they can remember.

About Michele Young-Stone

Michele Young-Stone earned her M.F.A. in fiction writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. Once, many years ago, she was struck by lightning in her driveway. She survived.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sandi on June 18, 2010

I really don't know what to say about this book. My main comment would have to be that the publisher's blurb is completely useless. You keep waiting for the two main characters to meet and connect, but they don't until the book is nearly over and then it's anti-climatic. I felt a lot of sympathy for......more

Goodreads review by Jen on April 19, 2012

Simple put, this was quite wonderful! I never once felt like I was reading about 'characters.' These were definitely real people. And the way Ms. Young-Stone interweaves the voices is quite amazing. Sometimes the narrator is different from paragraph to paragraph and yet I was never confused or lost......more

Goodreads review by Heidi on June 29, 2017

It was easy to get confused at first as the different chapters skipped between characters and times. Once things got going it was a little easier to figure out and the characters started to have interactions with each other. I thought they would be more closely tied together though, it all seemed so......more

Goodreads review by Lydia on April 11, 2010

Okay, so I loved this book. It was not what I expected, at all, but I still loved it. The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors is the story of two very different but but similar people (confusing, no?). Becca, a young girl who is struck by lightning and Buckley, a young boy who experiences the hor......more

Goodreads review by Irene on July 25, 2010

In this impressive first novel, lightning serves as a metaphor for life as two parallel stories unravel before us. And I do mean unravel. Becca, growing up in North Carolina, and Buckley, growing in Arkansas are hit from all sides by dysfunction, narcissist parenting, and benign neglect. They are al......more