Thirteen-year-old Beatrice Danzig has terminal cancer. When her junkie mom checks into rehab, she's sent to live with her aunt in the quiet suburban town of Saxon Hills, where she fits about as well as her baggy button-down and thrift-store plaid. In light of her impending death, Beatrice changes her name to Christmas and plows into the town like a wrecking ball. She's at the center of Christmas in July, a novel in ten stories told by ten people who collide with Christmas: the bored wife of a senior softball slugger, a socialite with a glitter fixation, a beekeeping hermit, a young runaway entangled with a strange cult. And then there's Aunt Nikki, the town planner who sleeps in a closet to keep her demons, real and imagined, at bay. Through ten unique voices, veteran author Alan Michael Parker charts the wreckage of a troubled teen in a small town, exposing the residents' secrets and their all-too-human hearts.