Upon first reading the synopsis of Julia Fierro’s The Gypsy Moth Summer, I had no real idea what kind of book it was supposed to be. Its mention of young love in the midst of troubled times made me think I would be losing myself in a young adult tale of star-crossed lovers, but, the more I read, the more complex the plot seemed to become. Ms. Fierro’s second novel is a beautifully tragic examination of love, race, class, and revenge, set against the backdrop of one memorable summer on Avalon Island.

During the summer of 1992, millions of gypsy moths invade the tranquility of Avalon’s woods and gardens. The sound of their nibbling serves as a sort of soundtrack to the lives of a group of dysfunctional men and women, all seeking to make sense out of the chaos of life.

Maddie Larosa is sixteen that summer, and, while the countless number of caterpillars puzzles and irritates her, it’s far from the most exciting thing happening in her world. She finally knows what it is to be truly, madly, deeply in love, and that trumps everything. She’s always been a bit of an outcast with a foot in both parts of Avalon’s society. Her father is an abusive, Italian mechanic, while her mother, who exists in a fog of alcohol and sleeping pills, comes from a well-to-do military family. Maddie can’t figure out where she really fits, and this troubles her greatly.

Then, Leslie Day Marshall moves back to Avalon, bringing scandal along with her. Once Avalon’s darling, Leslie is now married to an African-American botanist and is the mother of two biracial children. Soon, the residents of Avalon are in an uproar, as racial tension creeps up on them. Everyone has opinions about Leslie and her family, and most of them aren’t kind.

From the moment Maddie meets Brooks, the teenaged son of Leslie and her husband Jules, she knows the two of them have to be together. I found her utter certainty a little hard to stomach, but I suppose that’s how love is when you’re sixteen – wild and all encompassing. She knows her father won’t approve, but she can’t allow herself to care. Spending time with Brooks is all she cares about.

As Brooks and Maddie fall in love, the rest of the island is dealing with far uglier emotions. It seems that chemicals used by Grudder Aviation, the factory that employs many of Avalon’s residents, could be to blame for the cancer running rampant throughout the island, and feelings are naturally running high against the company.  Maddie’s grandfather, who used to work for Grudder, is desperate, out of a sense of misplaced loyalty, to prevent the factory being declared responsible, while his frail wife doesn’t want anyone to work out that her husband is suffering from dementia and tries, just as desperately, to reverse and/or cover up his odd decisions and actions.  Jules struggles to make sense of his family’s return to Avalon, a place he has long wanted to cut ties with, while Leslie seems to become ever more involved with the rich, white women who secretly mock her. All the while, tensions brew as plots of love, revenge, and survival are hatched.

As you can probably tell, The Gypsy Moth Summer is anything but a simple story. Its characters are incredibly flawed, each dealing with his or her own brand of trauma. Sometimes, I had trouble disentangling one subplot from the next. For example, it’s obvious Leslie has returned home for a very specific reason, but it was really hard for me to follow the clues the author left for me as a reader. This was frustrating at times, but I’m glad I stuck with it until the end.

Ms. Fierro’s writing is lush and evocative. This is usually a trait I love, but I must admit to finding it rather ponderous on a few occasions. I sometimes felt like I was wading through a morass of words to grasp even the simplest of meanings, and this made the story harder to get through than I would have liked. Good writing isn’t just in the construction of lyrical sentences and detailed descriptions. It’s also about making the reader feel a connection to the characters and setting, something I struggled to maintain at certain points.

The story is told from multiple points of view, allowing the reader to see things from myriad angles. This works well for the most part. The characters are very well-drawn. Ms. Fierro has a definite knack for creating people with identifiable strengths and weaknesses. No one is all good or all bad, and I was glad of this. I don’t do well with cookie-cutter characters.

As someone who grew up in the nineties, I was hoping to relate to the teenagers in the story, but my suburban childhood was nothing like theirs. Here, it’s commonplace for kids as young as twelve to be drunk or high. Substance abuse seems quite normalized by the author, something I imagine some readers may take issue with. This is a world of wild parties, unprotected sexual intercourse, and very little adult supervision.

There is so much more I could say about this incredibly complex story, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Part of this book’s beauty comes from the gradual unraveling of the characters’ lives and secrets. I do want to caution readers about a few scenes of pretty graphic animal cruelty. If you’re an animal lover like I am, you’ll want to be prepared. Still, I hope you won’t be dissuaded from giving this book a try. Despite its faults, The Gypsy Moth Summer is an engrossing read that has a lot of relevant things to say about human frailty in all its forms.