A solitary New Jersey librarian whose favorite book is a guide to suicide methods is struck by lightning in Alice Hoffmans superb novel, The Ice Queen. Orphaned at the age of eight after angrily wishing she would never see her mother again, our heroine found herself frozen emotionally I was the child who stomped her feet and made a single wish and in so doing ended the whole worldmy world, at any rate.Her brother Ned solved the pain of their mothers death by becoming a meteorologist applying reason and logic to bad weather. Eventually, he invites our heroine to move down to Florida, where he teaches at a university.Here, while trying to swat a fly, she is struck by lightning the resulting neurological damage includes an inability to see the color red.
