Summer Island by Kristin Hannah
Nora Bridge abandoned her daughters when she left her marriage in the past. She then rose to fame as a talk-show host on the radio and a respected newspaper writer known for her moral counsel. Ruby, her youngest child, is a struggling comedienne who draws inspiration for her biting, sarcastic humour from her renowned mother. Their alienation suddenly takes on a dramatic tone when the tabloids uncover a shocking secret from Nora’s past. Nora is hurt in an accident, and a glitzy magazine offers Ruby money to write a tell-all about her mother. Ruby goes home under false pretences to care for the mom she hasn’t talked to in nearly a decade.
Summer Island by Kristin Hannah
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Ruby’s childhood home on Summer Island in the San Juan Islands, where Nora urges them to go, is full of happy, loving, and belonging memories for Ruby. Ruby meets up with her first love there, along with his brother. The three of them had once been the closest of friends, unbreakable. Up until that summer, when Nora went and everyone’s hearts were torn apart.
As Ruby writes, what started as an expose transforms into a history lesson about her family. Nora is not the person Ruby has always detested. She is desperate to get back together with her daughter and is witty, intelligent, and vulnerable. Ruby is forced to mature and, at long last, see her mother—and herself—through the eyes of a woman as the magazine deadline approaches and she completes what has started to feel like a horrific act of betrayal to her. Finally, she needs to give herself permission to love. Beautiful, humorous, heartfelt, melancholy and eventually triumphant, Summer Island is a great book.
The gift of Kristen Hannah is above reproach! She has a unique ability to bring words to life. She makes the reader experience her characters’ emotions—whether joyous or sad—through them. The devastating effects and heartbreak that result from the absence of a strong sense of family and love are beautifully captured in Summer Island.
A masterfully created path toward forgiveness and salvation in a disintegrated family, Summer Island. Hannah’s writing engrosses readers in the grief and pain that can accompany genuine love between a mother and daughter as well as a husband and wife, as well as the anxiety that results from jumping to conclusions.
