Lightningstruck

by Ashley Mace Havird

In May of 1964, eleven-year-old Etta McDaniel's horse is struck by lightning--dead and gone, she hopes--out of her life "as though he'd never come in the first place, bringing with him one catastrophe after another." But Troy, gruesomely scarred, not only survives but seems to have gained supernatural powers, which Etta sets her mind on harnessing in her search for treasure. She is convinced that a find of the sort her hero Heinrich Schliemann unearthed at ancient Troy will set to rights everything suddenly gone wrong in her life: rivalry and betrayal at home and social unrest reaching even her family's farm.

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2016

About the author

ASHLEY MACE HAVIRD is a poet and novelist who grew up on a tobacco farm in South Carolina. Her debut novel, Lightningstruck, won the 2015 Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction and was published by Mercer University Press in September 2016. She has published three collections of poems: The Garden of the Fugitives (Texas Review Press, 2014), which won the 2013 X. J. Kennedy Prize, Sleeping with Animals (Yellow Flag Press, 2014) and Dirt Eaters (Stepping Stones Press,2009),which won the 2008 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Prize. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals including Shenandoah, The Southern Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, and in anthologies such as The Southern Poetry Anthology, IV: Louisiana and Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry. A recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in Literature, she lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, with her husband, the poet David Havird, and their own best dog in the world.

Reviews

[Danielle Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story about a young girl and her horse, who is struck by lightening. The world around her is growing and changing and she learns to navigate her childhood with the help of her horse. This book is more than just magic, it's about life, death, learning and loving.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was expecting this book to be entirely about a magical mystical horse! But it was more a story about young Ella navigating her way through the trials of growing up and dealing with change personally and in society. I enjoyed the story and the characters, especially how young Ella grappled with guilt when she was mean to loved ones.

[Rebecca Kightlinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lightningstruck
Ashley Mace Havird, Mercer University Press, 2016, 16.00, pb, 249 pp, 9780881465969

"It seemed as if the things I’d witnessed—Brad and Brenda, those bullies, trying to pick a fight at the drugstore sit-in, the fear seizing the grownups’ faces, Lamar Scurlock’s scrawny hand slapping Aubrey—all that ugliness was seared into the horse."


In the spring of 1964, Etta McDaniel’s horse is struck by lightning on the family’s South Carolina tobacco farm. Knocked unconscious, Troy miraculously survives, his left eye blind and his left side seared, a living testament to life after death, a “hant horse” reminiscent of the spirits that haunt Cleo, the family’s African American housemaid and Etta’s constant companion.
A bright girl who aspires to become an archaeologist, eleven-year-old Etta has long searched for buried treasure and artifacts. But the lightning strike that turned Troy’s eye inward seems to catalyze Etta’s coming-of-age as she too begins to see things differently: she comes to realize, for instance, that the young people who work on her family’s farm are forbidden to order a Coke at the drugstore counter; she learns that her family had long ago committed deeds she now sees as abhorrent; and as her awareness of the civil rights movement grows, her friendship with an activist—the widow of a Mohawk chief, an old woman deemed “a strange bird”—brings her face to face with the Ku Klux Klan.
Some of our greatest novelists are poets, writers with the eye and the ear—and the chops—to summon the precise image to convey place, era, character, and import; to meld that image with sensation and emotion; and to translate this amalgam into metaphor that sears the reader with story. I did not have to read Ashley Mace Havird’s bio to know that she was one such writer. Her award-winning debut novel, Lightningstruck, is highly recommended.
Rebecca Kightlinger

Originally published in Historical Novels Review, Issue 79, February, 2017.
​Citation: Kightlinger, Rebecca. "Lightningstruck" Historical Novels Review 79 (February 2017) P.41
https://historicalnovelsociety.org/re...

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming of age story. Etta wants to be an archaeologist but believes that her horse, Troy, is trying to keep her from discovering things in a nearby field. She is convinced the horse has supernatural powers since it's done something bad to another child and then was struck by lightning and lived.

Slow start. Better once things weren't focused on the horse.

[Maura Jortner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lightningstruck follows eleven-year-old Etta (Henrietta), a girl with a bad "temper'ment" and an even worse behaving horse, as she comes of age in the turbulent and often violent 1960s on her family’s tobacco farm. Racially-charged news of the day (murders committed by the KKK, Martin Luther King speeches given in Washington D.C, reports of sit-ins and other demonstrations) reflect and perhaps give more meaning to her relationship with Cleo, an African-American woman who lived in near poverty while she worked for the family her whole life. After Cleo’s death, Etta begins to realize how little she knew this woman, how much she expected from her, and she comes to a fuller knowledge of slavery and its long-term effects—damage that, like mustard gas and other poisons inhaled by soldiers during WWI, stays around to haunt for a lifetime or more. Through it all, Etta’s horse, Troy, who’s struck by lightning in the first chapter, haunts her and (in his own magical way) pushes her to grow and change, to become a better person.
Havird’s genius shines most brightly when she describes the historical South. She is able to capture the sights, smells, and overall feel of the place in time in a way that makes me believe she must have grown up there. For instance, when she tells about Etta lying in bed one night, she says, “It was one of those summer nights that wouldn’t let go of the heavy heat of day. Even with my fan sitting on a chair at the foot of the bed and pointed straight at me, I was sweating” (80).

Lightningstruck incorporates a gentle tone, but is a powerful story that will stay with the reader long after it is finished.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected a book about a girl and her horse, but the story takes us deep into the mythology and geography and sociology around them. A rich platform for a story I'll be eager to read again. The narrator's age gives her just the right perspective on her circumstances: childlike innocence growing up by seeing and speaking and touching the world around her. Beautifully composed, the novel features rich dialogue alongside lyrical descriptions of place and thought.