cover image Summertime

Summertime

Maureen McCoy. Poseidon Press, $15.45 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-671-62187-2

At age 85, lovely, elegant and wise in the ways of the heart, Jessamine Morrow suddenly runs off with Hazen Batten, a fellow resident of Hillcrest Retirement Home in Des Moines, Iowa. Jessamine's action shocks her daughter-in-law Alice and granddaughter Carla, both of whom, like Jessamine, are recovering from the recent death of James Morrow, who was Jessamine's son, Alice's husband and Carla's father. Frail, chain-smoking Alice works for a craft-and-hobby mail-order business, hoarding free samples along with her husband's old medicines in her home in a declining neighborhood. The sturdier Carla lives in the woods with her back-to-the-land husband in a house without plumbing or electricity. Surprised to find herself pregnant, Carla comes to stay with Alice for a while. As Jessamine adapts to life with Hazen, Alice and Carla plumb the depth of their grief and then begin, as Jessamine has, to relish their lives again. Quirky, believable and fully realized, the three women live through the season of the titlethrough car accidents, muggings and betrayalsto arrive at the beginning of autumn, their sense of humor intact and their hearts full of hope. McCoy wrote Walking After Midnight. (April)