Showing Swimming with Wings by Lee Libro

For most seventeen-year-olds, graduating high school means college plans, leaving the nest and shedding old hangups. But Lark Jennison is different. Ever since her parents died, she thinks she has wings. People think she’s crazy, but she’s not. Her wild imagination helps her escape grief and the doldrums of being smothered in the humidity and narrow opinions of a small town along the Savannah River. Under the guardianship of a brother who cares too much about the family name and his golf swing, she lives in their old mansion in the shadow of a family legacy fraught with rumors and too much disrepair. Leaving the nest is as unlikely as a bird swimming with its wings.

When she meets some of the "river gypsies", families of Italian descent living in the woods on the next town over, her world begins to change. Along with connection found in their histories and the Roma’s mystic roots, Lark finds love, spirit and the artistic conviction she’ll need to go to art school, but when you’re crazy in love, how do you leave?

She’s found kindred souls, especially in that of Peter Roma, whose father died with her own in the same drowning accident. Like his grandfather and many before him, Peter carries on the tradition of being a light healer, but in a world of corruption and fanaticism, his misinterpretation of this gift sets Peter and Lark on a collision course that will reveal the underpinnings of the town, the truth about “river gypsies”, beliefs and love itself.