Book Review: Summer Longing

Synopsis:

Ruth Cooperman moves to beautiful beachside Provincetown, Cape Cod, having sold her cosmetics company. She has rented the perfect waterfront cottage for the summer while she shops for her retirement home. After years of hard work and making peace with life’s disappointments, Ruth is looking forward to a carefree summer of solitude. Divorced and estranged from her only child, Olivia, Ruth summons her daughter to Provincetown on a pretense, hoping for reconciliation.

Ruth has barely arrived when a baby girl is left on the doorstep of her idyllic rental home. Ruth turns to her new neighbors for help with the abandoned infant, and is immediately drawn into the tight-knit community’s dramas.

The appearance of the mystery baby has an emotional impact on the women in town, including Amelia Cabral, the matriarch who lost her own child decades earlier; Elise Douglas, co-owner of the tea shop who was forced to gave up her dream of becoming a mother; and Jaci Barros, home from college for the summer, who feels trapped by the expectations of her parents and brother.

As summer unfolds, friends and family look after the infant, including Ruth, who finds herself caring for a baby for the first time in thirty years. Alliances are made, relationships are tested, and secrets are uncovered. But the unconditional love for a child in need just might bring Ruth and the women of Provincetown exactly what they have been longing for themselves.

An unlikely group of women come together to save the little girl . . . but end up saving themselves.

Review:

Author Jamie Brenner says she has “always loved reading and writing escapist books.” Growing up in Philadelphia, she read the books of Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins before discovering Sidney Sheldon, Herman Wouk, and Nelson DeMille and continuing on to George Washington University for a degree in English. She moved to New York City to work at Harper Collins Publishers, as well as Barnes&Noble.com and Vogue.com, along the way becoming a fan of Emily Giffin and Elin Hilderbrand, among others. When she turned to writing full-time, she focused on “stories of mothers and daughters and girls with dreams and falling in love and big cities and small towns and obstacles and joy.” And now Hilderbrand has dubbed her books “the gold standard of summer escapism.” Summer Longing follows up Drawing Home, The Husband Hour, The Forever Summer, and The Wedding Sisters.

With Summer Longing, Brenner remains true to her goal. It is a story about the struggles between mothers and daughters, chasing dreams, relationship difficulties, obstacles and, ultimately, joy, all set in the charming tourist destination of Provincetown.

The story opens with Ruth’s arrival in town. At the age of fifty-eight, Ruth has sold the successful cosmetics company she established, and decided to spend her retirement years in Provincetown, where she spent one youthful summer with her parents. She’s confident that she opted to relocate to Provincetown “for a reason, a reason she couldn’t fully explain even to herself. Ruth had never been one to second-guess her instincts.” In fact, it was in Provincetown that she met her husband, Ben, and began her life with him. However, the marriage faltered because of Ruth’s work ethic and singular determination to build her cosmetics empire. Having abandoned his dream of being a playwright, Ben became an anesthesiologist and Olivia’s primary caregiver following the divorce.

Living in New York City, Olivia is as obsessed with her career as her mother was, as evidenced by her most recent failed relationship and firm belief that it is impossible to balance one’s personal and professional lives. Employed at Hotfeed, a celebrity social media-management company, her last boyfriend told her, “I hope you and your phone will be very happy together” as he exited her life.

Elise Douglas has reluctantly agreed to rent the beautiful cottage she shares with her wife, Fern, to Ruth for the summer so that they can live upstairs from and focus on their tea shop. After several miscarriages, Elise had no choice but to give up her dream of becoming a mother when Fern refused to carry a child. When Ruth finds a beautiful baby girl on the doorstep one morning, Elise insists that she and Fern care for her rather than inform the local authorities, who will undoubtedly place the infant in a foster home. Elise is supported by Amelia, a widow, who declares that Provincetown folks take care of their own. Naturally, Elisa becomes attached to the little girl she names “Mira” because she deems her appearance a miracle.

You can take something broken and turn it into something whole.

As the summer progresses, Elise and Fern quarrel over whether to surrender Mira so that her parents can be located, especially given that residents are suspicious about her sudden appearance in town and questioning Elise’s contention that she and Fern are in the midst of adopting her. “Relationships — strong, enduring relationships — were in some ways one long negotiation.” Elise and Fern find that, unlike previous issues they have faced together, they have an extremely difficult time finding common ground on the subject of Mira. Olivia arrives to visit her mother under false pretenses and ends up staying longer than she anticipated, which forces her and Ruth to examine their fractured relationship. Olivia reaches out to her father for support and he, too, proceeds to Provincetown to render her aid, setting up an impromptu reunion with Ruth.

And young Jaci agrees to assist Elise and Fern by caring for Mira, in part to escape her brother’s demand that she assist him in running the family oyster business. Jaci insists that she wants no part of the enterprise, and plans to return to college in the fall.

Brenner creates vibrant, interesting characters who could be readers’ own neighbors. Ruth, Elise and Fern, and Olivia are all struggling as they navigate major life transitions. Ruth now realizes how putting her business ahead of her family’s needs caused her to miss spending time with Olivia as she grew up, a point driven home every time she cares — reluctantly, at first — for little Mira. She desperately wants to heal her relationship with her only child. Olivia faces a career crisis that requires her to reweigh her priorities and reconsider her options. She deeply resents her mother for not having given her enough time and attention as a child, and seeing her interact with Mira is particularly painful. She tells Ruth, “I don’t think you understand how painful it is for me to see the mother you could have been.” Ruth wants Olivia’s forgiveness and a fresh start, lamenting, “it’s the mother I am — today. Why do you insist on punishing me for the past?” Ben’s arrival poses further complications for Ruth because being around him stirs old feelings of affection and, perhaps, more. Elise and Fern’s relationship is tested by Elise’s reluctance to accept that Mira’s abandonment must eventually be reported to the authorities and unwillingness to accept that she may never be able to raise a child. Meanwhile, Jaci is a loving caregiver to Mira, providing critical assistance to Elise and Fern as they strive to make their business a success.

Brenner credibly causes the lives of the characters to intersect and intertwine much, initially, to Ruth’s chagrin. She arrives in Provincetown craving solitude in a beautiful home as she writes the next chapter of her life, but instead winds up frustrated by the presence of unwanted housemates, as well as Olivia’s preliminary resentment and reluctance to move past the pain of childhood. Olivia becomes involved with the locals, as well. Throughout it all there remains the mystery of Mira’s parentage and, more particularly, why someone decided to leave her on the front step of the cottage owned by Elise and Fern. After all, that individual could not have known that Ruth had only just taken up residence in the home temporarily.

Summer Longing is precisely the type of engrossing tale that makes for a perfect “beach read.” Brenner compels the story forward with the arrival of additional characters to the picturesque community, and the further complications they bring with them. The story is no less enjoyable because it is predictable, largely because of her endearing characters’ revelations and the growth they experience as they come together in solidarity around Elise and Fern, and work out their relationships with each other. Brenner believably portrays the emotions her characters experience during the various stages of motherhood, from Elise’s unrelenting desire to be a mother to Ruth’s significant regrets about all the ways she could have mothered Olivia differently. She also demonstrates that second chances can present themselves and provide the opportunity not to change the past, but to create a more satisfactory future because of the lessons learned through failure and disappointment. And after all of her characters’ secrets come to light, including the identity of Mira’s mother, Brenner provides a conclusion to each character’s story that is logical and emotionally satisfying. That is extremely important because, by the end of Summer Longing, Brenner’s characters feel like next-door neighbors for whom readers only want the best outcome.

Fans of the genre expect a “beach read” to be entertaining, engaging, and heart-warming, and transport them to a luscious setting where they can escape from their real lives for a time. Summer Longing succeeds on all counts.