Under a Dark Summer Sky
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
Under a Dark Summer Sky is a stunning debut novel, at once a love story set in a time of great turmoil and a vivid depiction a vicious hurricane.
Florida, 1935. In Heron Key, relationships are as tangled as the swamp’s mangrove roots. It’s been eighteen long years since Henry went away to war. Still, Missy has waited, cleaning the Kincaids’ house and counting the stars. Now he’s back, but she barely recognizes the desperate, destitute veteran he’s become — unsure of his future, ashamed of his past. When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death after the Fourth of July barbecue, suspicion falls on him immediately. As tensions rise in the small community, the barometer starts to plummet — a massive hurricane is on its way.
Based on real historical events,Under a Dark Summer Sky evokes what happens when people, sweating under the weight of their pasts, are tested to the absolute limits of their endurance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her standout debut, Lafaye takes a historical event the devastating hurricane that hit Islamorada, Fla., on Labor Day in 1935 and weaves it into a richly imagined tale that also makes a bold statement on race relations in the '30s. Missy, a black nanny for a wealthy white couple's son, is waiting for the man she loves to return to the fictional town Heron Key. The man, Henry, is a broken and despairing veteran of World War I who has never gotten over the horrors he saw overseas; now, during the Depression, he's trying to eke out a living in President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration program under a sadistic supervisor's eye. After a white woman is brutally attacked following a segregated beach barbecue, all eyes turn in accusation to Henry, who is black. As the small town's uproar grows, few realize that the devastating hurricane headed their way will test their ability to survive. Lafaye's blistering commentary on race, as well as her vivid descriptions, will stay with the reader.
