Posted by haywardauthor on Jan 16, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments
Meet Jim Morrison–not the lead singer of the Doors who died a rock ‘n’ roll death in 1971, but a chubby seventeen-year-old living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, born days after the singer’s death. Jim, or Jimmy, as most people call him, has been living a largely invisible life, overshadowed by his older brother, Mike, popular and charismatic, and his father, Fort, a stern and unyielding engineer. But everything changes the night the local public library explodes, with pieces of books and catalogue cards falling like snow from the dark sky. Jimmy is first on the scene with his father and it’s soon clear that Mike had been in the library when it exploded. Mike’s death upends the Morrisons’ suburban life and any sense of normalcy is destroyed. Their mother, Filomena, is nearly catatonic with shock, and Jimmy must become his much younger brother’s nanny, taking him to preschool every day and uncomfortably hanging out with a gang of mothers, watching them breastfeed and talking about peanut allergies. The cause of the library explosion remains mysterious, and Jimmy tries to help his father unofficially gather evidence at the site. Add to this his duties surrounding his mother’s idea to have a birthday party for his dead brother, and Jimmy finds himself busier and, bizarrely, happier than he’s ever been.