The Gypsy Moth Summer

April 17, 2017
Something is rotten in the heart of Avalon Island, home to Grudder Aviation, where the devastation wrought by the 1992 invasion of gypsy moths underscores the tension boiling to the surface of the islanders’ lives. Intermingled with scientific data about gypsy moths, Fierro’s (Cutting Teeth) riveting second novel unfolds through the eyes of multiple generations. Social doyenne Veronica is struggling to hide her husband’s dementia and protect his domineering image as “The Colonel” (president of Grudder Aviation) while keeping her terminal cancer and his long-time abuse of her a secret. Maddie, her granddaughter, traverses the slippery terrain of adolescence with its hormones and fearsome popularity entanglements. Dom, Maddie’s younger brother, is by turns ashamed and bewildered by his homosexuality. Leslie, renegade adult daughter of a rival prominent family, returns to the island on a mission to bring Grudder down, while her husband, Jules, a Harvard-educated African American, tries to navigate the challenge of bringing up his teenage son, Brooks, and four-year-old daughter, Eva, in the lily-white enclave of the Avalon upper crust. Can the budding romance between Brooks and Maddie survive against the backdrop of racism, class rivalries, changing social mores, and Leslie’s desperation for revenge? That question is poignantly answered in a powerful story showcasing a dizzying spectrum of relationships from the deeply destructive to the supportive and loving.

March 1, 2017
The summer of 1992 is pure hell on an insular islet off the coast of Long Island."GRUDDER IS CANCER / GRUDDER KILLS," reads the graffiti on the local war memorial. Tensions flare on Avalon Island as a defense contractor called Grudder Aviation runs into economic and environmental problems. Dealing with the fallout both publicly and privately are three generations of the islands' most prominent families, who live on magnificent side-by-side estates. If an author is God to her characters, the people of Avalon must have done something to offend Fierro (Cutting Teeth, 2014). For lo, she hath visited upon them toxic waste; racial bigotry; class resentment; vandalism; children strung out on drugs watching snuff and porn videos; abusive fathers, husbands, and dog owners; senile dementia; a weak peacetime economy; the rise of Bill Clinton; murder; suicide; stillbirth; and, undoubtedly worst of all, a biblical plague of gypsy moth caterpillars, described over and over in excruciating detail. Young lovers take to the woods--and listen to "the cack-cacking of the caterpillars feeding and the patter of chewed-up leaves spat thousands at a time onto the forest floor." Jeans are "spattered with [the] black slime" of caterpillar excrement, the little buggers are found in socks, bras, and ball gowns, there are "swarm[s] of caterpillars slithering across the window" and hands "slick with their gummy remains." Still, as one character points out, "perhaps a plague was just what the island needed." To get them through these revolting times, the characters find inspiration in sources as diverse as the plot of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the essays of James Baldwin, and the radical enlightenment offered by Oprah: "After each Oprah episode, she was depleted. To have eighty years of preconceived notions shattered, and then rearranged, in just forty-five minutes." Jam-packed with stereotypes, bad sex scenes, and cliches of every kind, this book has something to appall almost anyone.

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Starred review from May 15, 2017
In the summer of 1992, Avalon Island is invaded by pestilential colonies of gypsy moths. In spite of the plague, defiant teen Maddie is determined to enjoy the summer, but the voracious caterpillars are not the only threat to her happiness. Someone is confronting the aviation factory, the island's main economic driver and possibly the source of carcinogenic pollution. Maddie's grandparents, the once-feared and revered Colonel Pencott and his wife, Victoria, have returned from their mainland retirement to rescue the business, but the simultaneous homecoming of their prodigal heiress, Leslie Marshall Day, along with her children and her African American husband, Jules, a botanist, creates racial tension in the prejudiced town. As the moths blanket the island, Jules struggles against their meaningless destruction, Victoria fights to protect her husband's legacy, and Maddie and Leslie and Jules' son are drawn to each other, as everything is shadowed by political and social unrest. Though the novel is initially hampered by character inconsistency, Fierro (Cutting Teeth, 2014) hits her stride and succeeds in creating a suspenseful, richly symbolic drama and coming-of-age story. Poignant, raw, and, at times, brutally honest about the poison concealed behind the charming facade of a quaint community, this is an intense and meaningful read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)