The Summer Cottage

A summer cottage on the Long Island Sound holds memories, secrets, and a chance for a scattered family to come together in this heartfelt novel.

Helen Street spent every summer of her childhood at her family’s cedar-shake cottage on the North Shore of Long Island. The youngest of four, she shared her mother’s athletic genes and relished the outdoor games that filled those warm, endless days. Unlike her older siblings—fiery Charlotte, ambitious Thomas, middle-child Pammy—Helen rarely felt the pressure of her mother’s high expectations.

Thirty years later, with her brother and sisters scattered, Helen is the sole caregiver for her terminally ill mother. But now her mother has made a dramatic pronouncement: she will leave everything, including the cottage, to Helen when she dies—unless everyone comes to the shore for a long weekend over the Fourth of July. During this time Helen, Charlotte, Pammy, and Thomas will revisit the fateful choices of their shared history. And they will face new challenges that could shatter their fragile kinship—or reveal a family’s extraordinary power to remember, to forgive, and to grow.