Returning to the quirky small town of the acclaimed 'Eddie's Bastard', William Kowalski introduces Haley Bombauer (aka Flash Jackson), a girl who is longing to burst out of the confines of her provincial upbringing. With compassion and humour, the novel tells of her emergence into a world that 'was not designed with girls in mind'.
Haley, imaginative and restless, confronts the summer of her seventeenth year with glorious anticipation. She envisions herself roaming the surrounding hillsides and forests on her beloved horse, Brother. But when she falls through the rotted roof of the barn, she is consigned to spending the dog days of summer in a thigh-high cast, stuck at home.
The year that follows will transform Haley's life, for Haley's 'imprisonment' gives her peculiar grandmother the chance to pass along some of the mysterious and mystical arts that only she remembers. As Haley comes to understand just who her grandmother is, and what she can learn from her, she is transformed - from tomboy scamp to extraordinary, powerful woman.
