Firefly Cloak Book

When eight-year-old Tessa Lee and her brother, Travis, are abandoned in a campground by their desperate mother and her boyfriend of the moment, they are left with only two things: a phone number written in Magic Marker on Travis’s back and their mother’s favorite housecoat, which she leaves wrapped around her sleeping children. This housecoat, painted with tiny fireflies, becomes totemic for Tessa Lee, providing a connection to her past and to the beautiful mother she lost.

Seven years later, when word arrives that her mother has been spotted working at a tourist trap on a seaside boardwalk not far from where Tessa Lee lives, she sets off on a dangerous journey to try to recover what has been taken from her.

Steeped in the rich Southern atmosphere for which Sheri Reynolds has long been hailed, Firefly Cloak is a vivid coming-of-age novel of family, loss, and redemption.

Also available as a Random House Large Print edition and as an eBook

Publishers Weekly

Lamia is fast becoming a treasure to the audiobook world-her reading of The Secret Life of Bees earned her an Audie nomination. Lamia's performance of Reynolds's novel is a thing of beauty, pitch perfect and dead on. The story of 14-year-old Tessa Lee, who, at seven, was abandoned along with her little brother, Travis, is elevated beyond Reynolds's (The Rapture of Cannan) already poetic text by Lamia's exquisite and skillful interpretation. The pain and anger of abandonment mixed with the ache of yearning to see her ne'er-do-well mother again is made palpable by Lamia's uncanny empathy toward her characters. Lil, Tessa Lee's grandmother and caretaker, tries to hold on to and protect her growing and hurting granddaughter. Though all the characters shine, Lamia's depiction of Tessa Lee is inspired. This is fine acting, not just reading. As one hears Tessa Lee breathing and smiling along with her thoughts, it makes the listener smile, too. Simultaneous release with the Shaye Areheart Books hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 13). (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.