Lightning in July

Hally, a flutist, and Dan, a graduate student in History, contract polio on the same night in Boston in 1955, the last major epidemic before the Salk vaccine. They meet in the hospital, write a show for their patient friends and fall in love during their long hospitalization. Hally has bulbar polio and must give up the flute and Dan will not walk unaided again. But despite pain and disability, they find the courage to act on their feelings for each other.

Review Highlights

Hally and Dan meet and gradually, inevitably fall in love. Miraculously, the author avoids the artistic pitfalls of her plot and setting. Though every crack in the drab walls is noted and you can smell the disinfectant and taste the watery soup that Hally must learn to "drop" down her paralyzed throat, the novel never slips into bathos.

Though the book is candid, the process of turning the events into a novel inevitably works as a filter. The pathology is presented quickly and factually, curtains drawn around fear and rage as they're drawn around hospital beds. Slowly and incompletely, Hally and Dan recover, transforming "Lightning in July" into a story of love in a crucible. In 1989 there is nothing dated or irrelevant about that.
–Los Angeles Times

McLaughlin's straightforward narration transforms the events of a prolonged hospital stay into a richly textured tale.
–Publishers Weekly

Ordering Information

Lightning in July is sold out. For information on where copies may be found, please contact John Daniel & Co.