Description for BEE AND JACKY by Carolyn Coman: YEARS AFTER THE RETURN of their seriously wounded father from Vietnam, Bee Cooney and her older brother, Jacky, still bear the scars of a childhood in which they sought comfort and safety with each other and instead found themselves playing games of power and loss. When their parents, Phil and Ann, take a trip over Labor Day weekend, Bee and Jacky decide not to go with them to their grandparents' house and the woods behind it, where the children used to play during the first years of Phil's rehabilitation. In remembering and reinitiating the shameful game of their childhood, Bee and Jacky open themselves to an accelerating spiral of despair, rage, grief, and, ultimately, for Bee, forgiveness and transformation. Set in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the summer of 1975, this intense and searing story portrays with respect and compassion a family deeply wounded but gradually moving from darkness toward the light.
