What Lies in Orange Skies: A Thesis in the Field of Creative Writing & Literature for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies

Abstract

This thesis is the first half of my novel, What Lies in Orange Skies. The nine chapters included take place from September 1985 through January 1986 in a fictitious small town on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Squall Isle is an idyllic place to grow up unless your father is Dane Burke, the resident seascape artist who has a habit of irrational outbursts and periods of disappearing. The Burke children, caught in the whirlwind of their father’s everchanging moods, their mother’s neglect, and a close-knit community of busybodies, try their best to survive. Tash, a senior in high school with a habit of binge drinking and making poor choices, risks her reputation to avoid her home and father at all costs. Feeling responsible for taking care of his sisters, the anxiety-prone middle child, Duncan, struggles in school, jeopardizing his chances at a baseball scholarship. The youngest, Camille, a gifted ten- year-old who pretends to be a Catholic priest, is obsessed with dead saints that don’t decay and documenting her siblings’ transgressions and suspicious behavior. When she suspects they’re concealing an unnatural secret about their father, Camille sets out to uncover the truth. What Lies in Orange Skies is a novel about mental illness, childhood trauma, the price of survival, and the freedom of reconciliation and forgiveness.