The Summer I Dared

A New York Times bestseller offers “a compelling mystery with an insightful portrayal of captivating people facing challenges both ordinary and dramatic” (Booklist).

What comes after the moment that forever changes your life?

This is the question that haunts Julia Bechtel, Noah Prine, and Kim Colella, the only survivors of a terrible boating accident off the coast of Maine that claimed the lives of nine other people.

Julia, a forty-year-old wife and mother, has always taken the path of least resistance. Pigeonholed by her controlling family and increasingly distant husband as “loyal” and “obedient,” she realizes in the aftermath of her brush with death that there is more to her—and to the world around her—than she ever imagined.

Feeling strangely connected to Noah, the divorced, brooding lobsterman who helped save her life, and to Kim, a young woman whose role in the accident and subsequent muteness are a mystery, Julia explores the unique possibilities offered by the quiet island of Big Sawyer, Maine. With each passing moment, each new discovery, Julia grows more sure that after coming face-to-face with death, she must have more from life.

Drawing on an inner strength she never knew she possessed, Julia resolves to make things right for the future, fearlessly embracing uncertainties in a way she couldn’t have imagined only a few weeks ago.

The Summer I Dared is a deeply moving novel of survival and the resiliency of the human spirit.

“Delinsky is a first rate storyteller who creates believable, sympathetic characters who seem as familiar as your neighbors.” —The Boston Globe