Christmas in July

In light of her impending death, thirteen-year-old Beatrice Danzig has changed her name to Christmas. She's at the center of Christmas in July, a novel in ten stories told by ten residents of suburban Saxon Hills: the bored wife of a senior softball slugger, a socialite with a glitter fixation, a beekeeping hermit, a young runaway who can't outrun her past. The novel explores each of these people's lives before and after meeting Christmas--as well as Mr. Ramirez's mustache, The Wizard of Oz, cults and terrorists, Brown v. Board of Education, a band named Wagawagawaga, and the mystery of Aunt Nikki, Christmas's guardian, who sleeps in a closet to keep her demons, real and imagined, at bay. Through ten unique voices, veteran author Alan Michael Parker charts the wreckage of a troubled teen in a small town, exposing the residents' secrets and their all-too-human hearts.