The Summer Guest Book

Set primarily in a rustic fishing camp on the northern tip of Maine, the first 50 pages of Justin Cronin's The Summer Guest read like a lazy fishing expedition--most of the time is simply spent waiting for something to happen. Thankfully, this expansive family saga goes on to explore countless intriguing topics, including love, war, disease, loss, betrayal, and redemption. The book revolves around the story of Harry Wainwright, a wealthy entrepreneur who falls in love with the camp as a young man and returns decades later for one last day of fishing before he succumbs to terminal cancer. With Harry as a centerpiece, Cronin artfully weaves the tales of Joe and Lucy Crosby, the camp's owners; their daughter Kate; and Jordan, the camp's guide; into a complex web of family drama. Using history as both a backdrop and a main character, Cronin guides readers from World War II to Vietnam, with the story reaching its climax on a late summer day in 1994.

The beauty of The Summer Guest lies in Cronin's ability to create meaning in each character's situation. Whether dodging the draft on a fishing boat in rural Canada, serving up clams by the Boston Harbor, saying goodbye to a loved one, or finding new love where you were once afraid to look, Cronin creates deep, sincere characters with whom readers feel a powerful sense of investment. ("Here is grief, I thought, here is grief at last: the full measure and heft of it... I watched myself enter it as if I were stepping into a pool of the calmest, darkest waters... a feeling like happiness, everything drifting away?") This ability to make what at first may seem like a quiet day of fishing seem extraordinary is what sets Cronin apart from other novelists, and what makes a story of the everyday business of living, loving and dying seem somewhat extraordinary. --Gisele Toueg