The Lightning Circle

Reeling from a relationship gone wrong, 17-year-old Nora Nichols takes a summer job as a counsellor in Cradle Mountain Camp in West Virginia. She’s never even been to camp before, but anything is better than hanging around in her hometown, near the man who rejected her. “I’m suffocating at home,/where I’m reminded of him/at every corner,/where his name/hangs heavy in the air,/like smog.” Nora is determined to embrace a fresh start and to reinvent herself as a stronger, more independent person.

At first heartbroken and lonely, Nora (camp name “Nova”) meets women and girls from all walks of life. Over the summer, she builds relationships first with her quirky fellow counsellors, then with her cabin of 13-year-old girl campers. She and her charges swim, ride, play pranks on each other, tell each other scary stories and forge powerful bonds as they experience the magic and transformation of summer camp. As they near the end of their time together, Nora reflects, “the summer lives/in our bodies now,/where it will whisper to us/for the rest of our lives.”

The lightning circle, Nora learns, was a group of girls who survived a lightning strike by holding hands and singing, diffusing among their bodies the lightning bolt that would have killed a single girl. It’s a simple but moving metaphor for the healing web of friendship that helps Nora overcome her sorrow and find her own strength.

A heartwarming story told in accessible free verse and illustrated with Laura K. Watson’s delicate line drawings, The Lightning Circle reads like a teenager’s sketchbook/journal. Though the point of view is intensely Nora’s, her experiences and conversations touch on adolescent drama, sexual diversity, puberty, menstruation, eating disorders, reading disabilities, and above all, the healing power of friendship. The simple free verse is easy to follow, and the intimacy of poetry provides a clear window into Nora’s sometimes painful but ultimately satisfying journey to self-discovery.