Coming into their own

The heroines of this crop of summer fiction have a lot to learn -- about reality. They all come to a crossroads where they realize their lives have been based on inaccurate or incomplete information -- or their own refusal to stop acting a disingenuous role. In each novel, our heroines peel away layers of subterfuge to uncover a hidden truth. Some find horror, some find bliss, some find closure, and all find a liberation born of wisdom. Maybe this summer's theme is a reflection of the uncertain and changing times we live in, or maybe summer is just a great time to read about strong female characters shaking up their lives. Either way, all of these novels are absorbing stories that will stay with the reader longer than the usual beach blanket paperback.

"Backseat Saints," by Joshilyn Jackson (Grand Central, 352 pages, $24.99)

"Backseat Saints" takes us to Amarillo, Texas, where Ro Grandee is able to play the part of perfect young wife when she needs to, despite her husband's abuse. As we meet her, she is veering crazily back and forth between spousal appeasement and full-on homicide. Told in an affected drawl that occasionally grates, "Backseat Saints" nevertheless builds to a nail-biting, "Who's at the door?!" type-climax that ultimately justifies Jackson's Fannie-Flagg-on-acid prose.

"The One That I Want," by Allison Winn Scotch. (Shay Areheart Books, 288 pages, $24)

Another young woman whose marriage appears buffed and polished but is empty to the core is Tilly Farmer in "The One That I Want." Unlike Ro Grandee, however, Tilly is the only one being fooled. When an old high school friend, now ostensibly a psychic, bestows on Tilly the gift of self-awareness, the hollow timbers holding up the life she's built with her vapid high school sweetheart start to give. But although the shiny patina of her carefully crafted life may be cracking, Tilly finds one life's destruction is another life's beginning.

"The Queen of Palmyra," by Minrose Gwin (Harper Perennial, 416 pages, $14.99)

Substantive yet dreamy, this book is set in small-town Mississippi in 1963 and is earning early comparisons to Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." Florence Forrest is a lonely young girl whose insurance-peddling father undertakes suspicious late-night activities and whose mother gets by on moonshine and selling home-baked cakes for spending money. Her father becomes more volatile, her mother grows more sullen, and the townspeople treat Florence with wariness as she slowly and sickeningly begins to understand the hate, evil and despair running like an underground current through her town. Though readers will quickly recognize the shadow of the Klan in the Forrest household, Gwin rows us through the soupy chaos of the civil rights-era South looking only through Florence's still-forming senses, allowing us to experience the dawning of her horror the way a child might. As events push toward ever greater tragedy, it becomes clear that "The Queen of Palmyra" has taken us artfully and realistically into a dark place we've before seen only from the outside.

Rose Edelstein, the heroine of "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake," uncovers hidden truths about people in an unusual way: When she eats food, she can taste the emotions of whoever prepared it. She experiences her power for the first time while eating lemon cake, a painstakingly crafted confection her mother has labored to create; Rose nearly chokes on her mother's desolation. Concurrently, Rose's genius, Asperger's-afflicted brother begins literally slipping away. Bender's writing is deep and textured and the novel's outlandish premise is well-employed, but reader's should be forewarned that "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake," for all its measured sugars, leaves a lingering aftertaste of despair.

"Leaving Rock Harbor," by Rebecca Chace (Scribner, 292 pages, $25)

Working-class girl Frankie lives in a Massachusetts mill town, and the truths she uncovers take place behind the walls of the mansions inhabited by rich mill owners and their aimless progeny. Frankie's good looks gain her the attention of two young men, one from the right side of town, one from the wrong. Will Frankie choose polo-playing pretty boy Winslow Curtis or the Portuguese labor agitator Joe Barros? Can a town founded on whaling that switched to textile mills find a third act when the mills close down? "Leaving Rock Harbor" is set during the wax and wane of the Roaring '20s, so hair will be bobbed, corsets will be discarded and copious amounts of gin will be drunk before getting to the answers.

Also ...

Two novels that take slower, less plot-driven takes on life-altering passages in life are "Commuters" by Emily Gray Tedrowe (Harper Perennial, 400 pages, $13.99, on sale June 29) and "Perfect Reader" by Maggie Pouncy (Pantheon, 269 pages, $24.95, June 15). In "Commuters," 78-year-old Winnie marries elderly Jerry, sending both families into a shock born of changed expectations. In "Perfect Reader," magazine writer Flora returns to the New England college town of her youth in the wake of her academician father's death, only to find she has inherited the job of releasing his unpublished poetry manuscript.

In "The Nobodies Album" by Carolyn Parkhurst (Doubleday, 320 pages, $25.95, June 15), bestselling novelist Octavia Frost wants to rewrite her life -- literally. She conceives of a clever idea: She will rewrite the final chapter of all of her books. As she finishes it, she learns her estranged rock star son, Milo, has been arrested in a high-profile murder case. She puts her life on hold to reconnect and help him. Parkhurst intersperses the unfolding murder mystery with the reconstructed chapters from Octavia's novels. At first, it seems Octavia's rewrite project is the kind of high-minded artistic busywork born of a self-important writer's conceit. But as the past family tragedy that scarred Octavia and Milo comes into view, it becomes clear her literary work was intertwined with their estrangement and, in rewriting her fictional work, she's really trying to scrub the imperfections from her own soul.

These books provide a nice spectrum of characters, from Parkhurst's willfully blind Octavia, to Winn Scotch's silly Tilly, to Gwin's tragic Florence. Reality may knock them sideways in different ways, but each heroine provides a unique take on what happens when the truth becomes wonderfully, horribly, unmistakably clear.