"A gathering to rediscover love"

Nora Bridge left her husband and children eleven years ago. She has become a famous radio talk show host offering sage advice that much of the time has come from her own painful memories. The news breaks of her less than stellar early life and she loses her job as well as the respect of all her listeners. She gets into an automobile accident and her daughter, Ruby, comes to Summer Island to care for the mother that she has not spoken to for so many years. Ruby has worked at becoming a successful comedian in Los Angeles but after so long, it just never happened. When she is asked to write an expose on her mother for big bucks, she agrees. She and her sister, Caroline, cannot forget or forgive.

Dean and Eric spent their informative years on the islands. They had been childhood friends of Ruby and Caroline. Dean and Ruby fell in love as teenagers until circumstances separated them. Eric is ill and comes home to die. He calls his brother, Dean, and asks him to come see him. They had been close at one time but when Dean could not accept Eric's life style, they had gone their separate ways. Each brother has hopes of coming together in love before the end. Dean remembers his love for Ruby and the summer her mother left, how everything disintegrated, all their lives shattered.

As everyone congregates, memories surface -- the good and the bad.

SUMMER ISLAND is an incredible book that will touch your heart. Nora and Ruby have a long way to come together but it all starts with talking about the past, their love and their emotions. They have a difficult time opening up to each other, being real and truthful without trying to hurt. When they are finally able to open their hearts and minds with acceptance, the love follows. So, too, does the understanding grow between the brothers and between Ruby and Dean.

SUMMER ISLAND is a beautiful book that will keep you teary- eyed much of the time but it is also a feel-good book as relationships are resolved. I could wish that the book gave more time to the relationship between Dean and Ruby but I still give this novel my highest recommendation. The relationship between mother and daughter is written so flawlessly and is so touching. Eric is a superb secondary character that will keep you in tears. Kristin Hannah has certainly found excellence in SUMMER ISLAND. I will definitely be reading this one again in the future.

Reviewed by Marilyn Heyman
Posted July 15, 2002

The author of the cherished bestseller On Mystic Lake returns with a poignant, funny, luminous novel about a mother and daughter--the complex ties that bind them, the past that separates them, and the healing that comes with forgiveness.

Summary

Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. She has since become a famous radio talk-show host and newspaper columnist beloved for her moral advice. Her youngest daughter, Ruby, is a struggling comedienne who uses her famous mother as fuel for her bitter, cynical humor. When the tabloids unearth a scandalous secret from Nora's past, their estrangement suddenly becomes dramatic: Nora is injured in an accident and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a fortune to write a tell- all about her mother. Under false pretenses, Ruby returns home to take care of the woman she hasn't spoken to for almost a decade.

Nora insists they retreat to Summer Island in the San Juans, to the lovely old house on the water where Ruby grew up, a place filled with childhood memories of love and joy and belonging. There Ruby is also reunited with her first love and his brother. Once, the three of them had been best friends, inseparable. Until the summer that Nora had left and everyone's hearts had been broken. . . .

What began as an expose evolves, as Ruby writes, into an exploration of her family's past. Nora is not the woman Ruby has hated all these years. Witty, wise, and vulnerable, she is desperate to reconcile with her daughter. As the magazine deadline draws near and Ruby finishes what has begun to seem to her an act of brutal betrayal, she is forced to grow up and at last to look at her mother--and herself--through the eyes of a woman. And she must, finally, allow herself to love.