The Summer Cottage

Spanning two summers decades apart, Susan Kietzman's poignant new novel explores the complexities of the people-and places-that shape our lives...

Helen Street spent every summer of her childhood at her family's cedar-shake cottage on Long Island Sound. The youngest of four, she shared her mother Claire's athletic genes and relished the orchestrated games and competitions that filled those warm, endless days. Unlike her older siblings-fiery Charlotte, ambitious Thomas, middle-child Pammy-Helen rarely felt the pressure of her mother's high expectations.

Thirty years later, with her brother and sisters scattered, Helen is the sole caregiver for Claire, now terminally ill. Knowing her death is imminent, Claire has put Helen in the awkward position of telling the others that she plans on leaving everything, including the cottage, to Helen when she dies-unless everyone comes to the shore for a long weekend over the Fourth of July. During this time together, Helen, Charlotte, Pammy, and Thomas will revisit their long-ago decisions and assumptions. And they will face new choices that could shatter their fragile kinship-or reveal a family's extraordinary power to remember, to forgive, and to grow...

Praise for the novels of Susan Kietzman

"Readers will find themselves drawn into the tragedies and triumphs of this fictional family-distinct and yet utterly relatable."

-Hartford Books Examiner on The Good Life

"This book gives a great view of a typical marriage...the storyline is realistic, and one all readers can relate to, married or not."

--RT Book Reviews on A Changing Marriage