The Truth About Love and Lightning: A Novel

by Susan McBride

Overview

The Truth About Love and Lighting is a deliciously emotional story of family, forgiveness, love, and magic from Susan McBride.

A lie that Gretchen Brink told 40 years ago comes back to haunt her when a tornado brings together Sam, a mysterious man who can’t remember anything, and Abby, her newly pregnant daughter who is convinced Sam is her long-lost father. Though decades old, when Gretchen’s secrets are revealed, the ramifications will affect them all in ways they never could have imagined.

A mesmerizing study of family and love, The Truth About Love and Lightning is touching and observant, reminding us that we never know when our lives are on the precipice of change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062027283
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/12/2013
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	315
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Susan McBride is the USA Today bestselling author of Blue Blood and the Debutante Dropout Mysteries that include The Good Girl's Guide to Murder, The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club, Night of the Living Deb, Too Pretty to Die, and Say Yes to the Death. She also writes the bestselling River Road Mysteries and has penned three women’s fiction titles: The Truth About Love and Lightning, Little Black Dress, and The Cougar Club. She chronicled her bout with breast cancer in the short memoir, In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After Forty. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and daughter.

What People are Saying About This

Sarah Addison Allen

“Written with touching insight into family relationships and what we call home, The Little Black Dress is a lovely and entertaining journey into the magical side of things. I bet you’ll never look at your closet the same way again.”

Charlaine Harris

“I’ll read anything by Susan McBride.”

Melissa Senate

“I’m madly in love with this full-of-surprises story about secrets, family ties—and one magical little black dress. One of my favorite novels of the year.”

Editorial Reviews

McBride (The Cougar Club) takes readers on a winding journey to examine the far-reaching implications of dishonesty. It’s 2010 and single mother Gretchen Brink—who gave birth as a teenager to now-39-year-old Abigail—is living quietly in Walnut Ridge, Mo., with her blind twin sisters, Bennie and Trudy, when a violent twister rips through their farm. While assessing the property damage, Gretchen finds an oddly familiar man trapped under a fallen walnut tree—and subsequently sees that the long-barren tree has delivered an abundance of nuts. Is the mystery man the long-missing Sam Winston, who disappeared years earlier from a refugee camp in Africa and who Gretchen claimed is Abigail’s father? At the same time, Abigail is headed home from Chicago with big news of her own: she’s pregnant and soon to become a single mother herself. Abigail is convinced that her father has returned—but how can Gretchen admit that she lied about her daughter’s parentage? In working through that knotty problem, the author also takes a detour into the past, exploring generations that came before in the ’30s, ’50s, and ’70s. Seamlessly toggling between decades, McBride delivers a poignant page-turner with flawed but lovable characters. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Seamlessly toggling between decades, McBride delivers a poignant page-turner with flawed but lovable characters.” — Publishers Weekly

“Written with touching insight into family relationships and what we call home, The Little Black Dress is a lovely and entertaining journey into the magical side of things. I bet you’ll never look at your closet the same way again.” — Sarah Addison Allen

“I’m madly in love with this full-of-surprises story about secrets, family ties—and one magical little black dress. One of my favorite novels of the year.” — Melissa Senate, author of The Secret of Joy and The Love Goddess' Cooking School

“I’ll read anything by Susan McBride.” — Charlaine Harris

From the Publisher

Written with touching insight into family relationships and what we call home, The Little Black Dress is a lovely and entertaining journey into the magical side of things. I bet you’ll never look at your closet the same way again.

Sarah Addison Allen

I’m madly in love with this full-of-surprises story about secrets, family ties—and one magical little black dress. One of my favorite novels of the year.

Melissa Senate

I’ll read anything by Susan McBride.

Charlaine Harris

Magic, and four decades of unrequited love, form the plot of McBride's latest pajama-party read. The novel opens as a twister approaches the farm at Walnut Ridge. After Gretchen and her blind twin sisters Bennie and Trudy climb unscathed from the basement, they discover the storm hit only their property and deposited a mystery: a shaggy man who has no memory but looks an awful lot like Sam Winston, disappeared and thought dead the past 40 years. Sam is the grandson of Hank Littlefoot, a Native American born of the rez but who, as a teenager, gave up his destiny as a shaman and rainmaker to hit the boards in a traveling vaudeville show. Hank's act is an Injun rain dance; the crowd is always thrilled, and his sweetheart, Nadya (the magician's assistant), notices the streets are wet when they leave the theater. When asked to really make it rain by a desperate farmer, Hank brings a terrific storm, sealing his reputation. Hank's earnings make it possible to buy an old walnut farm, but the effort of rainmaking takes a terrible toll: After the storms, he becomes amnesiac and debilitated and has aged beyond his 20-odd years; in a matter of months, he transforms into an old man with a stoop and silver hair. Hank's daughter Lily has no such talents, but her son Sam has, and teenage Sam loves Gretchen. The farm could be his, but when Gretchen rejects him and confesses a one-night stand has made her pregnant (with a daughter, Amy), Sam goes to Africa as a relief worker. When tragedy befalls Sam, Gretchen tells a lie to soothe his grieving parents. She and baby Abby inherit the farm. Now, 40 years later, Abby has returned home pregnant, and the mystery man seems as if he will either crush everyone's hopes or spin a happy ending. McBride's modern romance is enhanced by the charm of the supernatural--who doesn't love a hottie whose passion brings lightning--but that doesn't prevent the predictability of the plotting.

Kirkus Reviews