Icy Sparks

An amazing first novel tells the sad, transcendent story of a young girl's growing up in Appalachia with Tourette's syndromeEastern Kentucky, 1956. Life is hard and sweet for ten-year-old Icy Sparks. Orphaned as a baby but raised by adoring grandparents, she is a bright, curious child. Yet something strange is happening to her, something that she'd like to keep hidden. Try as she might, her secrets -- those croaks, jerks, and spasms -- keep slipping out. Her teachers think she's willful, her friends call her the "Frog Child". Exiled from the schoolroom, she spends time in a children's asylum where she learns about being different and teaches her doctors even more. Yet, it is not until Icy returns home that she really begins to flower through her friendship with the eccentric and obese Miss Emily. Under her tutelage, Icy takes her initial steps back into the world, including her first hilarious and heartbreaking misadventure with romance.Icy Sparks, the account of this wonderfully original and charming character's adventures and mishaps, introduces a fresh, quirky new voice in the tradition of such Southern writers as Harper Lee,