~ finding the right voice ~
Life has not been particularly easy for Lacy: She and younger brother Franco try, as kids, to figure out life by watching TV comedies and dramas in which the characters live in households - unlike their own in Chicago's suburbs - that actually acknowledge weekdays and weekends as well as school terms, summer vacations, and national holidays. Then the two are tragically orphaned as teens when their high-flying, hard-drinking parents stand up on a roller-coaster ride. Not long afterward, Franco, who has been practicing his own unique brand of Catholicism since grade school, begins to realize that he and Jesus have a lot more in common than your average person on the street - unless you believe in modern-day miracles. After spending several aimless years in college, Lacy, in search of a place to sink her roots, moves to sultry Key West, Florida - land of the haunting roller-coaster accident - to focus on her painting career, the ever-strange Franco, and a houseguest who, when Lacy meets her, has been living in a refrigerator box. But Lacy's world becomes even wilder with the arrival of a seductive heartbreaker - a femme who is more fatale than Lacy is quite ready for.