One Summer
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
When Jack Canfield is told he has a terminal illness and that he has weeks to live, his first concern is for his beloved wife, Lizzie, and children, baby Jack, Cory and rebellious teenager Mikki. On Christmas Eve, when Lizzie comes home, Jack is devastated to see his neighbour, Bill Miller, kiss Lizzie on their driveway. Jack confronts her, she tries to explain he's got it all wrong, and distraught, she leaves the house into an ice storm - and a fatal collision with a truck.
Overwhelmed with grief, and with his illness worsening Jack is taken into a hospital. The children move to the West Coast to live with various members of the family. But then a miracle happens. Jack begins to recover, and day by day he starts to heal. Confounding the doctors, Jack leaves the hospital without any evidence of the illness.
Unexpectedly the family inherits a beautiful old villa with a lighthouse on the beach in South Carolina. It was the house where Lizzie grew up and Jack feels an inexplicable closeness to her while he's there. Although his mother-in-law, Bonnie, has other ideas for their future, Jack knows that this is the chance he has to re-build his relationship with his kids. And as he struggles to reconnect with the children, he also has the chance to find love again, perhaps even with Lizzie's help.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Legal thriller fixture Baldacci (Deliver Us from Evil) churns out a creaky, contrived family drama about Jack Armstrong, a terminally ill family man just praying to make it to Christmas. Sadness abounds, much more so when Jack's wife, Lizzie, is killed in a car wreck while on a medicine run. Plans are made by Jack's mean mother-in-law Bonnie: the three kids will get divided up among aunts and uncles across the country, and Jack will be put into hospice. Miraculously, Jack's health turns around, and he's able to reclaim his kids and move the brood from Ohio to the South Carolina shore where Lizzie grew up. There, he tries to reassemble the family and learn how to be a single parent, and just as they're beginning to settle into a functional family again, Bonnie sues for custody of the kids. Yes, it possesses all the subtlety of a dog fight, but it's also choked with pap ("No matter what you do, no matter how hard you fight, life sometimes just doesn't make sense") and so sappy you'd think Baldacci was earning a commission on each tear jerked.
