The Cure for Death by Lightning is the debut novel from Canadian author Gail Anderson-Dargatz.

It was nominated for the Giller Prize, was awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and became a bestseller in Canada (selling over 100,000 copies) and Great Britain (where it won a Betty Trask Award).

[1] Set in an isolated farming community in Shuswap Country,[2] British Columbia at the end of the Second World War it is a coming of age story containing elements of magic realism.

[3] Fifteen-year-old Beth Weeks has to contend with her family's struggle against poverty but also her increasingly paranoid and aggressive father whose behaviour leaves the family as outcasts in the community.

A number of unusual characters appear in the book, including Filthy Billy, a hired hand with tourettes and Nora, a sensual half-Native girl whose mother has an extra little finger and a man's voice.