Firefly Cloak: A Novel [Unabridged] [Hardcover]

Sheri Reynolds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2006

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reynolds's The Rapture of Cannan was a list-topping Oprah pick in 1996. Tenyears later, Reynolds's fourth novel gets going quickly by page five: alcoholic, drug-addicted single mom Sheila, taking up in Alabama with the latest in a string of ne'er-do-wells, deserts her two young children at a campground. Eight-year-old Tessa Lee awakes to find toddler Travis wandering around with a phone number magic-markered on his back and has only the shawl left by her mother, festooned with fireflies made of colorful thread, for comfort. Four pages and seven years later, Tessa Lee, who has been living with her grandparents, runs away to confront her mother, who has been sighted working as a mermaid at a Massachusetts boardwalk; she tells Sheila of Travis's death two years earlier and promptly loses her mother a second time. Ranging over the points of view of Tessa Lee, Sheila and distraught grandmother Lil, Reynolds flashes back periodically while the three try to eke out a present. Reynolds is frank in depicting Sheila's often reprehensible behavior and tender in portraying the warmth between Tessa Lee and Lil. The book never fully gels, but it is uplifting in its explorations of family, forgiveness and redemption. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Fifteen-year-old Tessa Lee is on a mission. She and her younger brother have grown up with their grandparents since their mother, Sheila, deserted them seven years earlier. But Tessa Lee is convinced that there is a good reason that her mother had to leave, and that all will work out when they meet again. So when a relative says that he has seen Sheila working at a seaside wax museum a couple of hours away, the teen sets off on a journey to reclaim her mother. The past seven years have turned Sheila into a broken, addicted woman, though, and Tessa Lee is forced to let go of the image she has held onto through her childhood. As the two struggle to come to terms with their new relationship, Tessa Lee must also work through the responsibility that she feels for her brother's recent death. Ever present in the background is Sheila's mother, Lil, who fears making the same mistakes with her granddaughter that she did with her daughter. Reynolds is in top form with these beautifully drawn, flawed characters. Fans of her previous novels will be drawn to her subtle, Southern lyricism, and teens will appreciate her perceptiveness in exploring damaged mother-daughter relationships.-Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Crown (April 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609610082
• ISBN-13: 978-0609610084
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,922,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful coming of age story, May 6, 2006

By 

Ratmammy "The Ratmammy" (Ratmammy's Town, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Firefly Cloak: A Novel (Hardcover)

FIREFLY CLOAK by Sheri Reynolds
May 6, 2006

Amazon Rating: 4/5 stars


Having read THE RAPTURE OF CANAAN a number of years ago, I was quite excited to read and review FIREFLY CLOAK by Sheri Reynolds and I was not disappointed. While the two stories are different, I think fans of the first book will enjoy this one. The novel is about a girl who, along with her younger brother Travis, is abandoned by her mother at a campsite when she is only eight years old, and Travis is only four. The book opens with this scene at the campsite and is treated as a flashback. Their mother's parents pick them up, and their maternal grandparents are now raising the two children. The story then moves forward to the present, where Tessa Lee is a teenager, Travis has passed away, and she is on her way to finding her long lost mother who apparently had been living not too far away all this time.

I loved FIREFLY CLOAK (the title comes from the cloak that Sheila, their mother, leaves behind with the children). Sheri Reynolds has a way of writing with such beautiful prose. She did a good job at depicting the pain of abandonment that young Tessa Lee grows up with, while at the same time she yearns to see her mother again, to be reunited with the woman that gave birth to her. The grandmother, Lil, tries to raise Tessa Lee in a way that she can atone for her mistakes she made with her daughter, Sheila. She rules with a strict set of beliefs, mostly based on her rigid religious commitments, but at the same time she wonders if it was this same thinking that caused Sheila to run away at a young age, the start of her spiral downward.

And that brings us to Sheila, whose life has been one big mess after another. The man she ran away with was another fly by night relationship, and since those days Sheila did whatever she could to make a living, even turning tricks. But during all those years, she hasn't forgotten her children. Her story is told in-between the present story and the flashbacks of Tessa Lee's life, and it's not pretty. Between Lil's story, Tessa Lee's, and Sheila's, the reader will get a good picture of what their lives were like and what brought them all back together. The mystery of Travis' death will also be revealed to the reader, something that had me curious all the way up to the end. FIREFLY CLOAK is a somewhat tragic story and at the same time a coming of age tale that the reader will enjoy. I hope to see more by Sheri Reynolds. Her books are always something special and tend to remain in my mind for a long time.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding novel...on my "best of" list for 2006, April 26, 2006

By 

Britta Coleman "author of Potter Springs" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Firefly Cloak: A Novel (Hardcover)

I love a book that you blaze through in one day and weep when it's over. Both because it's poignant, beautiful and true, and because the writing humbles you with its exquisiteness.

Firefly Cloak by Sheri Reynolds is such a book.

Along with the Oprah hit Rapture of Canaan, Ms. Reynolds' excellent backlist includes the novels Bitterroot Landing and A Gracious Plenty. This latest offering shines amidst such quality work, and is sure to more than satisfy her longtime readers.

If you haven't sampled this author's work before, prepare yourself for a gorgeous, unforgettable read. You won't be disappointed.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars insightful character study, April 22, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Firefly Cloak: A Novel (Hardcover)

Seven years ago in Alabama addict Sheila left behind her two sleeping preadolescent children at a campground to run off with her latest loser. When the older of the two youngsters, eight-year-old Tessa Lee awakens, she finds her toddler brother Travis roaming by himself with a telephone phone number marked by a magic marker on his back and a colorful cloak adorned with fireflies wrapped around him.

Several years later, fifteen years old Tessa Lee has lived with her maternal grandparents especially grandma Lil since the desertion incident, but Travis has since died. When Tessa Lee learns that her mother works as a mermaid at a Massachusetts boardwalk museum she decides to confront her mom expecting a valid reason for her leaving her two children behind. Tessa Lee runs to Massachusetts, but the woman she used to call mom, is not the same; instead Sheila is a broken addict and offers little in the way of explanation. Will the child leave the mother this time as the grandmother worries she will fail for the third time as she believes she has with Sheila and Travis.

This is an insightful family drama that targets highs school students and their parents with a deep tale. The story line does not hold back when it comes to the three key women especially the harmful behavior of Sheila (to herself as much as her children); the desperate obsession to know why by Tessa Lee who feels guilt over her sibling's death; and Lil who takes responsibility for failing Shelia. The interrelationships that include the negative make for an insightful character study.

Harriet Klausner