Synopses & Reviews
"Dark and dangerous and strange and wonderful…Kennedy writes with the gritty poetry of Daniel Woodrell and misfit sensibility of Flannery O’Connor." — Benjamin Percy
Five-year-old Daisy Gonzalez’s father is always waiting for her at the bus stop. But today, he isn’t, and Daisy disappears.
When Daisy goes missing, nearly everyone in town suspects or knows something different about what happened. And they also know a lot about each other. The immigrants who work in the dairy farm know their employers’ secrets. The hairdresser knows everything except what’s happening in her own backyard. And the roadkill collector knows love and heartbreak more than anyone would ever expect. They are all connected, in ways small and profound, open and secret.
By turns unsettling, dark, and wry, Kennedy’s powerful voice brings the town’s rich fabric to life. Tornado Weather is an affecting portrait of a complex and flawed cast of characters striving to find fulfillment in their lives – and Kennedy brilliantly shows that there is nothing average about an average life.
Review
"A wonderful novel. Deborah E. Kennedy's Tornado Weather has a very distinctive energy, and there is real pathos along with subtle humor. The characters are from a social class that is too often overlooked and misrepresented. Kennedy gives them their due, with all their resourcefulness, resilience, and suffering intact." Charles Baxter, bestselling author of The Feast of Love
Review
"Deborah Kennedy's vision is as clear as her embrace is wide. With Tornado Weather, she has given us a novel that startles and surprises from the first page to the last, turning our heads again and again. Yet the thunderclaps the book produces are not those of a thriller, despite the missing child at its center, but of how many human beings it seems to know, and how variously it inhabits them. In the abundance with which it is populated, and the diversity with which it is colored, it offers something considerably more than the fragments of a few stray characters. It offers the mosaic of an entire community." Kevin Brockmeier, bestselling author of The Brief History of the Dead
Review
"Everyone knows someone else's secret, everyone has a secret held over him or her, and everyone has an opinion on what really happened to Daisy. A beautiful portrait of flawed subjects trying to find meaning and fulfillment." VoxMagazine.com
Review
"Tornado Weather is dark and dangerous and strange and wonderful, and Deborah E. Kennedy writes with the gritty poetry of Daniel Woodrell and misfit sensibility of Flannery O’Connor. So many characters swirl together — their stories compiling with cyclonic force — into this layered, powerful study of a small town in decline." Benjamin Percy, bestselling author of Thrill Me, The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding
Review
"As Kennedy takes readers from the trailer park to the McMansions, from the laundromat to the psych ward, she brings this flailing Midwestern town to life. She creates a rich chorus of distinct and authentic voices." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
An Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel
"Dark and dangerous and strange and wonderful...Kennedy writes with the gritty poetry of Daniel Woodrell and misfit sensibility of Flannery O'Connor." --Benjamin Percy
Deborah Kennedy tells the story of a five-year old girl who goes missing in a small town, a place where everyone knows something different about her disappearance and about each other.
Five-year-old Daisy Gonzalez's father is always waiting for her at the bus stop. But today, he isn't, and Daisy disappears. When Daisy goes missing, nearly everyone in town suspects or knows something different about what happened. And they also know a lot about each other. The immigrants who work in the dairy farm know their employers' secrets. The hairdresser knows everything except what's happening in her own backyard. And the roadkill collector knows love and heartbreak more than anyone would ever expect. They are all connected, in ways small and profound, open and secret.
By turns unsettling, dark, and wry, Kennedy's powerful voice brings the town's rich fabric to life. Tornado Weather is an affecting portrait of a complex and flawed cast of characters striving to find fulfillment in their lives - and Kennedy brilliantly shows that there is nothing average about an average life.
About the Author
Deborah E. Kennedy is a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana and a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Kennedy has worked as both a reporter and editor, and also holds a Master's in Fiction Writing and English Literature from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Tornado Weather is her debut novel.