Lourdes, Michigan, summer of 1968. Four friends make a pact: in exactly fourteen days, before the sun’s first rays hit the lake, they will leap together into death. They are outsiders, all the four of them, for different reasons. Kay Campion is fat, as a child she found her mother who committed suicide and her father re-married only a couple of months later. Vera is beautiful and gracile, but she was bullied due to her crippled fingers. CJ is searching for his identity: does he love boys or girls? And last but not least, Saint who comes from a very poor and highly dysfunctional family. They are looking for someone who loves them just as they are and found each other. Since life does not seem to have much in offer for them, why should they continue living? Will their last 14 days on earth make a change?
The story is told from Kay’s point of view. Only step by step do we learn why she is struggling so much with life. Not just that she has lost her beloved mother and had to see her hanging in the basement, it is also the permanent question what she is to her father. Her emotions are expressed in her dysfunctional relationship with her own body – quite an authentic and typical reaction for teenage girls. Yet, for me even stronger was the character of Vera. She is really lost and without any stable ground to walk on. She seems to be highly gifted and is a perfect example of what bullying can make of a child: turning the talented dancer into a drug addict who confounds physical closeness with love. But also the boys are highly interestingly drawn. CJ who is constantly digging in his father’s past in a concentration camp and Saint who seems to have several personalities reflected in the different ways his name is used.
As shown before, the most stunning about the novel are the characters who are elaborated in every detail and thus really come alive while reading. You can easily imagine them in reality and also their pact make absolutely sense. The title - hinting at Lourdes in France with its famous Marian apparitions – promises a wonder, a sudden and unexpected healing from the things the four teenagers suffer from. But wonders do not happen that often and apparitions and inspiration are reserved for the selected few, not the average boy or girl.
A noteworthy novel which, however, I would not recommend to teenagers with emotional troubles.