Tornado Weather: A Novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, July 11, 2017

Brilliantly written, powerfully moving. I found out about it on a list of Edgar Winners, but it is really more literature than mystery.Chapters could stand on their own as short stories. One theme of the book is the layers of connection and memories that build up in a small town community. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, but all the characters are connected by stories or history. While there's a missing girl in the beginning of the book and many of characters are responding in one way or another to her disappearance, that is only one of the plot points.The other major one is change. What used to be an all white town now has Mexicans in it. There's a transgender teen, a gay young man, people who use alcohol and drugs or politics to deaden their pain. The book is set, I'd guess, maybe 5-10 years ago. I found it almost comforting to be reminded that deep political division existed before the current era.The book is triumphant and transcendant. I can't remember when I liked a first book so much.

This is a lovely debut novel. It has been nominated for the Edgar Award for best first novel by the Mystery Writers Association (it is on a short list of five books; we will learn in April, 2018 which novel wins). While the Edgar short-listing is an indication of the book’s quality, buyers should be aware of the fact that this is not, by any stretch of the imagination a crime, suspense or mystery novel. It leverages mystery elements (as does, e.g., Oedipus the King and The Great Gatsby) but it is not ‘genre fiction’. We are in small-town Indiana and a young girl who is wheelchair-bound has gotten off of her school bus and, then, promptly disappeared. While her disappearance hangs above the narrative it is not the prime focus of the narrative.Novelists are urged to ‘create a world’ in their fiction; here the writer is creating a town (and all that that means for human culture and contemporary society). She creates the town by allowing the denizens of the town to describe their lives and experience. Many of the stories are sad or bittersweet and most of the story tellers are struggling personally and financially. Some are quirky—a collector of roadkill, e.g. and the always reliable teller of tales, the operator of the beauty parlor. Their stories do not focus on Daisy, the missing child. This is not like the film Rashomon, in which each speaker tells a different version of events. They are not reconstructing Daisy’s disappearance; they are describing their own lives and the interconnections of those lives with those of the other tellers.The book is beautifully written. It is honest, human and generally apolitical. It is filled with simple but enormously-creative metaphors and similes. The author writes like an individual on her tenth novel. The prose is polished and mature to an uncommon degree and there are some laugh-out loud moments along with moments of great poignancy.I will not spoil the genre-bending ending which is very, very unique. Some will find it strange; others will find it transcendent. Some will be nonplussed, others will be very moved.Bottom line: an excellent mainstream novel that leverages mystery elements. It is long on humanity and short on politics. Just what we needed.

This was one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It was about real middle America people (not grotesques like one book reviewer said). Kennedy doesn't judge the characters but shows their humanity and as you start a new chapter with new characters she makes you care about them all. You want for them what they want and you feel sympathy for them and their lives. I thought I bought a mystery story and it is not really the main story. I wasn't disappointed because the intricacies that the author navigates in introducing to new people but still tying them all together makes this a work of art. Thank you Deborah for making this one of my top lifetime books. This is from someone that reads 2 books a week and browses book award nominees for her picks. Oh and thank you for making me cry at the end!!

A game, gritty, laugh-out-loud-funny, dark, and magical book. Hung on the framework of a mystery, Tornado Weather is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a town fraying at the edges and coming apart at the seams. Colliersville, Indiana is filled with tramps and scamps, sad sacks and misfits, each one effortlessly drawn and each with a story to tell and plenty of secrets to hide. I haven't thought of Flannery O'Connor in years but, man, her world of freak show characters and small-town claustrophobia all came rushing back to me as I plowed through this book. And the ending, literally out-of-the-blue and revelatory, is perfection. Ms. Kennedy sure can write!

I loved these characters with all their beautiful and horrible sides. In the midst of our current natural disasters, I find myself thinking of the small communities and who they might have been prior to destruction. Wondering now if it has changed them as a community and individuals in the way these characters are forced to be a new version of themselves.I also love all the little word play jokes throughout!!

This book was odd. The way that it was written was different. I felt that it bounced around a ton... it was written from the point of view of WAY too many people; which made it very hard to keep up with.... even with all that, there was something about it that kept me engaged and reading it... It is worth the read.