Lit by Lightning

From North Carolina comes the electrifying new voice of Nicole Sarrocco, whose debut novel Lit by Lightning-first in the Occasionally Trueseries-is an intensely personal and strangely universal tale of finding grace in chaos, creating meaning from nonsense, and for heaven's sake not making too much of a spectacle of yourself. A witty, hilarious, transcendent and disturbing tale of ghosts, manners, and the family we choose and the ones who choose us. "I could sweep together the dust of our hearts. The ashes of my grandparents' house that didn't burn. The complete fire that is death. The charred wood and the pulverized concrete and the souls of a million barbecued pigs. The dust in the corners of basements. Everything that isn't the fire itself, the movement through the wires. All of it rolled up together and shot into the sky, into a firework-that's a song you could sing out over the radio. The ones on the other side can hear us, then. If we can roll all of it together and name it out loud, send it out into space on transmitters or something-then they could hear us. If they can hear us, then we'd be able to hear them, too. That makes sense, doesn't it?"