"I was born into a mentally ill family. My sister was the officially crazy one, but really we were all nuts.".

So begins My Sister from the Black Lagoon, Laurie Fox's novel of growing up absurd. Lorna Person's tale is wrested from the shadows cast by her sister, Lonnie, whose rages command the full attention of her mother, a Rita Hayworth lookalike, and her father, a television network accountant full of Jackie Gleason bluster.

Their San Fernando Valley household is off-key and out-of-kilter, a place where Lonnie sees evil in the morning toast and runs into the Burbank hills to join the animals that seem more like her kin. Imprisoned inside a cuckoo's nest of a family, Lorna faces the world armed with nothing but an unshakable faith in Art - and perhaps the healing power of show tunes.

As Lorna searches for acceptance in her teen years - buoyed by Shindig! and Joni Mitchell - she must also disentangle herself from her beloved sister's wild and morbid underworld. In high school, Lorna finds her place by not fitting in, finding solace and mutual support with a troupe of hippie friends as luminous and wacky as herself. High school also ushers in the arrival of The Boy and a gift for making poems.

The imagination that sustained Lorna as a girl now carries her into the theater, placing her center stage for the first time in her life, where she finally finds the room to come to terms with her sister and parents.