The Summer I Believed in God and Johnny B. Good by Pamela Jekel is the story of a woman searching for her father. Raised by her grandparents, Lacey Wickham was told that her mother had a nervous breakdown shortly after her birth and was institutionalized. Now at twenty-seven, a psychologist with her own relationship issues, Lacey visits her aunts to discover if they know who her father might be. Two sisters who fled the family home in their teens, the aunts run a thriving spiritualist business in Cassadaga, Florida, specializing in tarot readings, séances, and spells. They have also conjured up Forneus, a minion from Hell, who shows up looking like a surfer dude in board shorts, passing out Jehovah's Witness pamphlets. The aunts call him Johnny B. Good, and he is always up for an adventure. Persuaded that indeed the supernatural is real, Lacey, her aunts, and their mischievous minion take a wildly-dysfunctional road trip to rescue Lacey's mother, find her father, and learn the life lesson that opening the door to the hereafter is really about being open to how we relate to each other here and now.
