The Summer Pier

If your life feels more fascinating, mysterious, paradoxical, and full of delightful possibilities than other people have given you room to explore, then I wrote The Summer Pier for your benefit. A pier is, in itself, a world where landlocked realities and ghostly possibilities tremble through one another. Inside of this atmosphere, the characters of seven short stories do not hammer home predefined sermons or lectures. In all of these stories, I have deliberately set aside my own beliefs so that the stories' protagonists are set free to probe out what the late author John Updike refers to as the "infinitely fine" delicacy and complexity of all that exists in our cosmos.

In "The Shell," a romantic attraction between two cousins develops unexpectedly after both young people have been separated for most of their lives. This love is real. Should it be acted upon? In spite of the fact that our society stigmatizes and condemns such love relationships? In a longer story, entitled "Manhood," the slow, persistent, and at-times bewildering stages that a teen-aged boy must go through in order to make a proper transition into his own adulthood are presented as they might occur in your own life. Whenever I complete a book and write to you about it, my heart keeps bringing me back to the same understanding. If a single story in this book assists you to better understand your life and to live that life more richly, I will feel completely satisfied and happy.

My best wishes to you,
Michael Naugle