Like seemingly everything else in our culture, fireworks displays are now polarizing events. For some, they are thrilling extravaganzas of color and light illuminating the night sky on holidays. For others, they are an assault on the ears, harmful to the environment and traumatizing for dogs.
The pyrotechnics in Beth Raymer’s debut novel “Fireworks Every Night” (Penguin Random House, $27) are metaphorical, and no matter how much of a sassy, humorous spin her central character tries to put on them, they have devastating effects.
At least partially autobiographical, “Fireworks Every Night” is a riveting coming-of-age story about survival, poverty and familial love. It’s also about the fallacy of the American Dream and the one-two punch of mental illness and substance abuse. And at its conclusion, it’s about the search for home and how one person’s freedom can be another person’s prison.
Set primarily in South Florida during the ‘90s, the narrative jumps around in time as it charts the dreams and despair of a family of four that, thanks to a big insurance payout, relocates from a mobile home in a used car lot in Ohio to a custom-built, 2,000-square-foot Tudor house with a pool near Palm Beach.
Dad is a charismatic car salesman with a weakness for alcohol and gambling. He’s adored by C.C., a plucky 12-year-old who’s good in school, a gifted athlete and the peacekeeper in the family. It’s through her eyes that we watch the story unfold. Her troubled teenage sister Lorraine displays disturbing, self-loathing behavior that suggests a dark origin, and her glamorous, cold-hearted mother cruelly lights the fuse that eventually detonates the family.
Like Stephanie Land’s memoir “Maid,” Raymer’s story paints a vivid picture of the hand-to-mouth existence of the working poor. When low-paying jobs aren’t enough to cover the basic cost of living, pockets are lined by selling stolen goods, providing alcohol to minors, playing penny slots, scratching lottery tickets or defrauding insurance companies. Living quarters may be a brand-new Tudor home one minute, then a homeless shelter or halfway house the next.
C.C. is an endearing character in part because she’s quick to spot the comedy in a situation. While careening through Florida looking for a place to call home, her father grows frustrated with the long drive, the whining kids and their yowling cat, Snickers.
“Dad … swore the next place we saw, he didn’t give a damn if it was a prison camp, that’s where we would live. Which is how we ended up in Loxahatchee.”
Her appeal also stems from her youthful innocence. C.C. has an optimistic outlook, a deep well of empathy and an eagerness to please others. Blind to the red flags, she has faith everything will turn out okay. Watching that flame of trust slowly extinguish is heartbreaking to witness as the members of her family make one bad decision after another.
As grim as that all sounds, the book is also very funny, and it captures the vibe of ‘90s-era Florida in all its sticky, kitschy glory.
“It was heaven just to wander around the KOA in the matching leopard-print bikinis Dad bought the three of us at the Lion Country Safari gift shop,” Raymer writes. “Our trip of the day was to Kobosko’s roadside fruit stand. Mom sucked on a thick sugar cane stalk, compliments of Mr. Kobosko. Flatbed trucks zoomed by, and construction workers honked and whistled.”
But the level to which both parents fail their children is staggering. In a shocking display of fury and despair, C.C. self-sabotages her shot at a college scholarship in a scene that painfully illustrates the price she has paid for the lack of parental love and support.
All is not lost, though. After a series of missteps, C.C. finds meaning in her life in a way that perfectly dovetails with her past experience but more importantly, she figures out what she truly needs to be free.
Suzanne Van Atten is a book critic and contributing editor to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. You can contact her at Suzanne.vanatten@ajc.com.
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