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Summerlong: a book for any season

by eapearce

I had an unusual experience when I first picked up the new novel Summerlong, by Dean Bakopoulos. When I picked it up and read the inscription, it was dedicated to someone I knew years ago when I attended a tiny college in the middle of Iowa. What! I quickly flipped to the back jacket to read about the author and found out that he is the writer-in-residence at Grinnell College—the little school I went to! The book itself is actually set in Grinnell, during one of Iowa’s classic sweltering summers, and I enjoyed reading about all the places that I remembered from my time there. Even those who haven’t been to Grinnell—which, realistically, is almost everyone else—will enjoy this unique setting for the story. The tensions between the characters and the buildup to climactic scenes are enhanced by the essentially expressionless setting of the story. The heat, the flatness and the lack of activity in Grinnell seem to make the tumult in the characters’ lives all the more dramatic.

The story focuses on four different residents of the town whose lives are intertwined in ways both known and unknown by the quartet. Claire and Don Lowry are a married couple whose marriage and financial status are both on the rocks. The enigmatic “ABC” has moved back to Grinnell to mourn the loss of the love of her life, and finds herself one night stoned in a hammock with the sleeping Don Lowry curled next to her, having just met him a few hours before. Enter, Charlie, who has also recently returned to Grinnell, on the pretense of cleaning out his family home and caring for his ailing father, but really to escape the “artist’s” life he had tried and failed to create for himself in Seattle. On the same night that Don is asleep in the hammock, Claire finds herself skinny-dipping in Charlie’s father’s pool. As the summer progresses, these four characters’ fates become increasingly intertwined, with some delicious twists along the way. Despite the title, Summerlong is a book for any season… and a particularly good read to remind yourself of the heat of summer as the cold winter months creep in.

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