Our Last Vineyard Summer
A Novel
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
From the “great storyteller” (Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society) Brooke Lea Foster, a captivating new novel set in 1965 and 1978 about a graduate student who returns with her sisters to their family’s summer home on Martha’s Vineyard and begins to unravel old family secrets.
After suffering through her first year of graduate school at Columbia following her senator father’s death, Betsy Whiting is hoping to spend the summer with her boyfriend…and hopefully end the summer as his fiancée. Instead, her mother—a longtime feminist and leader in the women’s movement—calls Betsy and her sisters back home to Martha’s Vineyard, announcing that they need to sell their beloved summer house to pay off their father’s debts.
When Betsy arrives on the island a week later, she must reckon with her strained familial relationships, a long-ago forbidden romance, and the complicated legacy of her parents, who divided the family even as they did good for the world.
Following a dual timeline between 1965 and 1978, and filled with the vibrant, sunlit nostalgia of the cherished New England vacation setting, Our Last Vineyard Summer poignantly captures two generations of women navigating love, loss, and womanhood while trying to find the courage to stand up for what they believe in—and the strength to decide if the home they once loved is worth saving.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This appealing family drama from Foster (All the Summers in Between) unfolds across two impactful summers on Martha's Vineyard in the 1960s and '70s. Virgie Whiting, a journalist married to a U.S. senator in New York, longs for independence, and she wants the same for their three daughters. By 1965, Virgie's progressive newspaper column has driven a wedge between her and her husband, Charlie, who would prefer she stand by his side rather than claim the spotlight. The rift causes her to take the girls to the family's summer house on Martha's Vineyard. Fast-forward to 1978, a year after Charlie's death in a plane crash. Virgie calls her youngest daughter, Betsy, for help, telling her that Charlie was borrowing money to afford a second house on the island and they need to get it fixed up to sell. Betsy, a graduate student in psychology at Columbia, reluctantly agrees, even though she's busy with her thesis and is getting serious with her professor boyfriend. As the summer wears on, Betsy contends with resentment toward Virgie for asking less of her two older sisters, who are now settled down, and the story hurtles toward another bombshell revelation involving Charlie's secrets. The expert plotting is matched by pitch-perfect character work. Foster's fans will adore this.
