Excerpt from A Brief History of The Flood by Jean Harfenist, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Later, Randy whispers, "Hey," and points at Dad standing under the front door light. When we look, he shakes his head and goes inside, which is just as well because he would have told Mom not to get carried away when she's just having an up day. When a pointy-winged bat flies fast and low over our heads, we hit the deck, then lie there laughing at ourselves. By ten o'clock we're battling mosquitoes so big that Randy wraps Davey in a towel and runs for the house. Mosquitoes never bite Mom. Her blood's too sweet. Mitzy and I run screaming after Randy, swatting at ourselves. Mom shouts, "Love you." We holler back, "Love you, love you, love you." And it's true.

Early the next morning I rip off my nightgown and pull on the swimsuit I dropped on the floor next to my bed last night. It's cold and wet and there's sand in the crotch. Mitzy's on the other half of our naked bed, sleeping on her knees with her butt in the air, face in the pillow. She only lays down flat when she's going to wet the bed. Right now every mattress in the house is bare because the sheets are on the float.

Downstairs Mom's sleeping on the davenport with one of Dad's undershirts over her bikini, catnapping like she does in the middle of every project. Nothing to worry about. I move her cup of coffee and sit on the floor. Her hands are tucked under the side of her face, squishing her cheek up against her nose. When I touch a blond curl on top of her head, it wraps around my finger, her eyes pop open and she sits up, perky like she's never been asleep in her entire life.

She asks, "You didn't see it yet, did you?"

I shake my head no.

"Close your eyes." She takes my hand and leads me outside. The screen door slams behind us as she kneels next to me on the brick patio she laid last summer. She folds an arm around my shoulders, and I rub my nose on her neck for the warm smell of coffee and cigarettes. "Okay, Lily Nilly," she says. "Now open your eyes." She's pointing toward the lake. "Lily, sometimes you need to squint at something before you can tell what it is."

But I can see it perfectly. A wedding cake is floating next to our sagging dock. The bottom layer is a rectangle, and above that are two round layers, a little one on top of a big one. While we watch, the frosting turns from white to buttercream as the sun rises over the hill in the field behind the house.

Excerpted from A Brief History of the Flood by Jean Harfenist Copyright© 2002 by Jean Harfenist. Excerpted by permission of Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.