Nearer Than The Sky

The acclaimed author draws readers into the fascinating world of Munchausen syndrome by proxy in this “totally absorbing novel about daughters and mothers” (Ursula Hegi, author of The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls).

When Indie Brown was four years old, she was struck by lightning. In the oft-told version of the story, Indie’s life was heroically saved by her mother. But Indie’s own recollection of the event, while hazy, is very different.

Most of Indie’s childhood memories are like this—tinged with vague, unsettling images and suspicions. Her mother, Judy, fussed over her pretty youngest daughter, Lily, as much as she ignored Indie. That neglect, coupled with the death of her beloved older brother, is the reason Indie now lives far away in rural Maine. It’s why her relationship with Lily is filled with tension, and why she dreads the thought of flying back to Arizona. But she has no choice. Judy is gravely ill, and Lily, struggling with a challenge of her own, needs her help.

In Arizona, faced with Lily’s hysteria and their mother’s instability, Indie slowly begins to confront the truth about her half-remembered past and the legacy that still haunts her family. And as she revisits her childhood, with its nightmares and lost innocence, she finds she must reevaluate the choices of her adulthood—including her most precious relationships.

“Lush, evocative.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A complicated story of love and abuse told with a directness and intensity that pack a lightning charge.” —Booklist

“A lyrical investigation into the unreliability and elusiveness of memory . . . the kaleidoscopic heart of the story is rich with evocative details about its heroine’s inner life.” —Publishers Weekly