Lightning in July

Talented flutist Hally Blessing and Harvard scholar Dan Lewis, stricken with polio on the same night in July 1955, meet in the polio ward at Boston's Wahl hospital. During their nine-month hospitalization, they become close companions and contemplate marriage. This poignant story, autobiographical in inspiration, we're told, is related with candor. McLaughlin's straightforward narration transforms the events of a prolonged hospital stay into a richly textured tale, with heroes and villains in the characters of parents, doctors and other patients; her setting is visualized easily. Hally and Dan's budding friendship, complicated by their illness, is addressed with insight. McLaughlin skillfully ends this first novel with a fitting resolution: characters emerge wiser and stronger, still uncertain, but optimistic, with renewed energy. (Oct.)