The Summer That Melted Everything
“A wonderfully original, profoundly unsettling, deeply moving novel that delivers both the shock of a fully realized reality and the deep resonance of parable. ”
Robert Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author
A BuzzFeed Books Pick of 31 Incredible Books to Read This Summer
Winner of the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize for 2016
Nominated for the 2016 GoodReads Readers’ Choice in Best Debut and Best Fiction
An Audible Editors Top Pick of the Best Audiobooks of 2016
Ohioana Literary Award Finalist
Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award Finalist
Nominated for the Lillian Smith Book Award
Fielding Bliss has never forgotten the long, crazy summer of 1984 when a heat wave scorched Breathed, Ohio. It was the year he became friends with the devil.
Sal seems to appear out of nowhere-a bruised and tattered thirteen-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home, where he's welcomed into the Bliss family, assuming he's a runaway from a nearby farm town.
When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. Murmurs follow him and tensions rise along with the temperatures, as an unbearable heat wave rolls into town right along with him. As strange accidents start to occur, riled by the feverish heat, some in the town start to believe that Sal is exactly who he claims to be. While the Bliss family wrestles with their own personal demons, a fanatic drives the town to the brink of a catastrophe that will change this sleepy Ohio backwater forever.
Praise