One Summer in Savannah by Terah Shelton Harris

In One Summer in Savannah by Terah Shelton Harris, Sara Lancaster returns to Savannah, Georgia, after eight years living in Maine where only her family knew she delivered a baby girl, the result of  rape. This Fourth of July offering tells the tale of family, redemption, and unconditional love as Sara faces her fear of Savannah to be with her dying father, a man who speaks only in poems.

Hoping to dodge her child Alana’s paternal family, Sara hides her as best she can as she cares for her father and helps out in his bookstore. Her rapist Daniel Wyler went to trial and is near the end of serving his 10-year sentence. He has a twin named Jacob who has been helping Sara’s father by suggesting updates to the bookstore. In return, Jacob has been receiving poetry lessons from Sara’s father Hosea.

When Jacob enters the bookstore, he recognizes that Alana is part of his family: she looks and acts exactly like his late sister. At first unsure of Jacob’s motives, Sara agrees to let him work with Alana, a mathematical wizard, as long as he does not reveal to his brother and his mother that a child resulted from the assault.

How will Jacob keep his promise to make Alana a secret from his brother whose life is now complicated by cancer and from his mother who worked tirelessly to shame Sara as a whore during the trial? How can Sara make a life for herself in a town that created so much gossip about her when she left Savannah? What will it take for her to protect herself from the rich and influential Wylers who might seek custody of Alana?

This is the first novel by Terah Shelton Harris, a librarian and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in magazines including Catapult, Women’s Health, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Backpacker, and Minority Nurse. Originally from Illinois, she lives in Alabama.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 20, 2023.

I would like to thank Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review. 

Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur

 Little Monsters was the pet name for widower Adam Gardner’s two children in this novel set in Cape Cod in 2016 by Adrienne Brodeur due out June 27. Ken and Abby became motherless shortly after Abby’s birth when their mother suffered a pulmonary embolism.

Adam, a recognized oceanographer, raised his children mostly by himself having tried marriage twice more but unsuccessfully. Ken and Abby became deeply committed to one another as children but as adults, their relationship has withered, partly because Ken inherited his mother’s studio where Abby now lives and works.

Abby is an artist who started with sculpture using found items but grew into painting. Ken is a businessman who has visions of becoming a member of Congress…and then, who knows? Abby has remained single while Ken has a beautiful wife and two daughters.

Despite his ability to work and care for his children, Adam has long suffered a bipolar disorder, controlled by medicine. On the cusp of his 70^th birthday, he has decided he needs to make one more scientific discovery. To think clearly, he stops taking his meds correctly, knowing his adult children will be upset as he spirals.

The Gardners are all carefully hiding a number of secrets, when one they do not know about shows up: Stephanie Murphy, a Baltimore police officer, who has a deep interest in the family. She surreptitiously lays plans to meet Abby, Ken, and Adam before she reveals a nearly four-decade-old bombshell.

How will Steph’s secret upset the Gardners’ world? What will the result be for a father who abuses and misuses his medicines as he grasps for one more achievement in his field? Is there a way for Abby and Ken to come to a point of reconciliation with each other and their father?

Little Monsters is Adrienne Brodeur’s first work of fiction having produced the memoir Wild Game in 2019 that was one of the most talked about books that year. In addition, she founded the literary magazine Zoetrope: All-Story with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. She has contributed essays to Glamour, The National, The New York Times, Vogue, and other publications.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting June 16, 2023.

I would like to thank Avid Reader Press, a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

Our Place on the Island by Erika Montgomery

 In Our Place on the Island by Erika Montgomery coming out in June, Mickey Campbell has a big secret: her Baltimore restaurant Piquant is in serious financial trouble, and she is keeping it under wraps from her partner and fellow chef Wes Isaac. Mickey thought she could handle the business side of owning a restaurant but that is proving to be untrue as overdue invoices are piling up on her desk. A couple of vendors have already stopped delivery, and Wes wonders why.

A phone call from her mother Hedy prompts her to come to the family home in Martha’s Vineyard, the Beech House. The home has been in the family for generations but unbeknownst to Mickey, her widowed grandmother is going to sell the home as she begins a new life with a new husband. Mickey barely has any time to process these changes as the wedding is in a few days.

With her restaurant in the red, this is not the best time to leave it behind to head to Martha’s Vineyard, but Mickey will do about anything for her grandmother Cora. Both Mickey and her mother are uncomfortable with the wedding plans as they lost their grandfather and father only three years ago.

As the story plays out on a 1999 timeline, chapters are interwoven with a look at Cora and her husband Harry as they start their married life in the Beech House in 1948. Turns out Cora’s fiancé is Max Dempsey, the carpenter who remodeled Cora’s kitchen back then. Both felt flickers of infatuation during the renovation, but how far did they take it?  Even neighbors noticed the amount of time Max was spending at the house when Harry was away on business back in the early days of their marriage, and the current gossip in town is that Cora is marrying “the one who got away,” which requires an explanation to both Mickey and her mother.

How will Mickey and Hedy be able to cope with this remarriage especially now with the news of a possible scandal? What will Mickey and Wes do about their restaurant? What chance is there to keep the Beech House in the family?

A native New Englander, Erika Montgomery currently lives with her family in the Mid-Atlantic. Her debut novel A Summer to Remember was published in 2021. In addition to penning books, she teaches creative writing, collects sea glass, and watches old movies.

Hotel Laguna by Nicola Harrison

 During World War II, Hazel Francis from Wichita, Kansas, heads to California to find a job that would contribute to the war effort in Nicola Harrison’s latest historical fiction Hotel Laguna due out June 20. Hazel becomes one of the “Rosie the Riveters” at Douglas Aircraft until the end of the war brings the end of her job with men returning to their places constructing airplanes. Sad because she really enjoyed her job, she hopes that some day she will once again be working on airplanes, perhaps maybe learning to fly them.

Hazel stays behind in California, winding up in the small town of Laguna Beach, home to an art crowd. She becomes an assistant to the famous artist Hanson Radcliff, a job that can mean anything from posing nude to running errands to working in a gallery he supports. Cantankerous Radcliff is beloved by the town because of his contributions to the art scene even though he lives with the anguish of a disgrace that occurred earlier in his life.

While her boss gives her constant grief, the community embraces Hazel who represents Radcliff at community meetings, finding herself becoming a key player in Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters, an actual event in which “classical and contemporary works of art are transformed by real people through costumes, makeup, headdresses, lighting, props, and backgrounds.” The annual pageant was started in 1933 interrupted only by World War II and the Covid pandemic.

As Hazel becomes more involved with the artist and the mysterious incident that keeps him home except for regular visits to the bar at Hotel Laguna, she turns to the library to find articles from 35 years ago that might shed more light on the scandal that has crippled him emotionally and driven him to drink . She learns that Radcliff had been the personal artist for fictional actress Isabella Rose, and when she died under mysterious circumstances, he and his shocking portrait of Isabella disappeared.

Was it possible that Radcliff had something to do with his benefactor’s death? Where was the famous painting that no one had seen since 1910? What can Hazel do to help her employer find peace in his declining years?

Nicola Harrison’s first book of historical fiction, Montauk, in 2019 was inspired by the many summers she visited there, and I found it to be a beautiful debut novel. A Hampshire, England, native, Harrison moved to California as a teenager and studied literature at UCLA. After spending 17 years in NYC in the magazine publishing field, she returned to California where she settled with her family.