jack sheedy

Through a crisis of faith, hope emerges.

The author explores his crisis of faith when his sister, Peggy, dies at age 40 from complications due to diabetes. Through creative application of images and metaphor, employing the cicada (heat bug) and the phoebe, this memoir takes the reader on a personal journey of humor, poignancy and struggle that ultimately ends with a sense of hope.

"If you grew up in Smalltown, U.S.A. – and even if you didn’t – "Sting of the Heat Bug" will take you home. Stealing strawberries, trying to make sense of the secret code of adult-speak, dealing with unexpected pain – it's all here. I highly recommend this book."
—Susan Campbell, award-winning former columnist at The Hartford Courant, and the author of the memoir "Dating Jesus"  and the biography, "Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker".

"When he was a boy, Jack Sheedy's father told him that it was necessary to embellish when telling a story—and in this rich and moving memoir, Jack has done just that, looking again at the reality of his childhood through the lens of his adult imagination.  This special kind of re-visioning brings the truth of the past into a sharp, emotional focus that goes far beyond the mere recalling of events—and gives us a beautifully written story of love and loss, of a certain historical time and of a certain family, and of a bond between brother and sister that even death cannot destroy. 

In this moving and beautifully written memoir, Jack Sheedy looks back to his childhood—to his family, his town, his time in history—not with an attempt to get every detail "right", but to tell about the complex bond between a brother and a sister, one that emerges in memories that have, over time, been burnished by imagination.  In "Sting of the Heat Bug", Jack not only gives us the story of a love that cannot be broken by time or death, but also engages us in a conversation about the interaction of memory and fiction and how, even when specific actual details have been lost, it is the essential emotional truth that remains."
—Cortney Davis, author of "The Heart's Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing" and "Leopold's Maneuvers".