THE LIGHTNING FIELD

Bizarre circumstances help three broken loners connect to one another in Montgomery’s touching debut novel.

Set against the sprawling backdrop of New Mexico, this novel posits an unseen current running through the world that can bring people together. Autistic boy Jed Hark can hear voices in electricity. After Jed’s parents abandon their unusual son, he ends up at the SafeHaven treatment center in the charge of social worker John Allard. Allard has a romantic relationship with Simone Smith, a distant, one-time rising star sculptor who becomes bogged down while attempting to complete her latest massive landscape installation. Ex-con Neal Carver is riding cross-country on a motorcycle that once belonged to his deadbeat dad (“Handed down, father-to-son, Neal had resurrected it, and now it was part of him”). He makes the mistake of staying in a card game with Sixto and Reba, a psychotic couple; Neal wins the final hand, but they later steal his bike. He retaliates by taking their stash of $66,000, and the chase is on. While trying to escape, Neal is struck by lightning. Neal steals a van in which Jed, who’s run away from SafeHaven, stows away, and they end up taking shelter at Simone’s ranch. The trio bond as they flee their evil pursuers. Montgomery’s tale illustrates the maxim that there’s somebody for everybody. These three damaged, self-involved people, all abandoned by their parents, learn how to change and care about others when forced together by trouble—self-preservation should have dictated that they run in opposite directions. But Jed wants to find someone who will accept him, as odd as he is; Simone and Neal require incentives to lower their walls, and they find them in Jed and each other. The author convincingly depicts this makeshift family forming organically amid turmoil. Sixto and Reba are over-the-top villains, but they definitely pose a threat. Montgomery has successfully created a group of outsiders whom readers will want to see survive and thrive.

This winning novel captures the moments when emotional lightning strikes for its three protagonists.