Summerland Cove
BY Ellen baker
Apples Never Fall meets Maine in this captivating novel of family secrets, summer celebrations, and putting things back together again after they’ve all fallen apart—from the acclaimed author of The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
Lindy has the summer of a lifetime planned at her family’s beloved cottage in Summerland Cove, Maine, where she’s spent summers all her life and where she and her husband David met as teenagers. She’s slated big events three weekends in a row: David’s fiftieth birthday party, her parents’ fiftieth anniversary party, and her oldest daughter Hailey’s wedding. But when David doesn’t show up for his own party, everything about the life they’ve created together is thrown into question…
…as the shattered family sets out looking for him. Has he been in an accident? God forbid, been the victim of a crime? Or is it something more cliché—a midlife crisis, an affair? Surely, he’ll show up for his beloved daughter’s wedding—won’t he?
The agonizing days tick by and still no David. Lindy’s four nearly grown children are panicked. Lindy struggles to remain calm, even as long-buried details of the family’s past begin to surface, offering distressing clues. Meanwhile, her mother seems to be harboring secrets of her own, her father has grown alarmingly absent-minded, and Hailey wrestles with whether she should get married at all—even if her father does turn up.
A richly drawn novel of mothers, marriages, and one endearingly messy family, Summerland Cove beautifully evokes the crisp air and rocky beaches of coastal Maine, while poignantly revealing how complicated histories can shape the present in unexpected ways.
The Story Behind the Book
On a perfect July evening in the summer of 2024, I went for a walk around an oceanfront loop of summer cottages near where I live in Midcoast Maine and saw a big extended family (I was sure I saw three generations, from age 8 to 80 or so) gathered on the front porch of an old yellow cottage, talking and laughing and snacking. I knew the cottage sat empty for most of the year, because I walk past it all the time, and I could tell that these people came from all over the country to gather because of the license plates on their cars. As I walked past, a next-door neighbor came out of his cottage with a plate of charcuterie and a bottle of wine, heading over to hang out with his summertime neighbors on their porch. The whole scene sparked a thought of what it would be like to gather every year like that – in such an idyllic place, with family and friends you probably would see only once a year – for the best two weeks of the year in Maine. And then of course, being a novelist, I had to start thinking about all the things that could go wrong.
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