When Lightning Comes

Turnball, Texas is a hateful town, haunted by centuries of racial bigotry. In '52 lightning strikes down eight-year-old Willie Adams, leaving behind a painful mass of charred flesh. The electricity scars his pale skin so intensely, he now looks more like his best friend, Louis, the son of a poor black sharecropper. While struggling to survive, Willie finds out his family has been brutally murdered, leaving him alone, hunted.

Willie feels his life is over until the first of many miracles befalls him. Louis's father, Elroy Johnson, reluctantly accepts the deformed orphan into his meager shanty, hiding him amongst his wife and eight children. To survive Willie must embody a totally new existence---learning firsthand what it means to be black in a cruel white man's world. As the years pass a beautiful metamorphosis unfolds. In living amongst those his mother once despised, Willie discovers the indubitable gift of family and transcendental unconditional love.

At seventeen, Willie uncovers a supernatural gift given him by the lightning's fury so many years ago. On a gridiron, under a torrid sky, lightning returns, empowering Willie to stop evil from destroying everything he loves. Although Willie Adams might be fictional, the themes he represents are timeless and powerful. Readers will cheer on this triumphant, reluctant hero and the ideals he represents