The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me - by Suzanne Kingsbury (Paperback)

About the Book

An enormously talented young writer has crafted a pitch-perfect, cinematic first novel rich with unforgettable characters, mesmerizing prose, and smoldering sexual tension. With a fresh and vivid rendering of timeless themes, this novel captures the exhilaration of first love and the consequences of rebellion in a place resistant to change.

Book Synopsis

Deserted by her mother and raised by her whiskey-drinking, gun-shooting father, Haley Ellyson hides two explosive secrets that both empower her and threaten to undermine everything she cherishes. Having already broken the heart of every boy in Houser Banks, Mississippi, Haley is engaged in a dangerous flirtation with her father's best friend when Fletcher Greel, the judge's son, comes home for the summer, fresh out of a New England prep school. Fletcher's friend Riley is in love with Crystal, a blues-singing black girl, and Fletcher falls instantly for Haley. The four soon become inseparable, but as summer wanes, local disapproval of Riley and Crystal's romance takes violent turns, and Haley's secrets surface to devastating results.
A pitch-perfect first novel rich with unforgettable characters, mesmerizing prose, and smoldering sexual tension, The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me captures the exhilaration of first love and the consequences of rebellion in a place resistant to change.

Review Quotes

Orlando Sentinel A haunting first novel...captivating...Kingsbury's prose is measured and luminous.

The Hartford Courant The most vivid, drenched-in-place rendering of Mississippi isn't some long-lost but newly found William Faulkner story. It's a first novel by a lifelong New Englander, Suzanne Kingsbury. With lush, lovely language, Kingsbury evokes the sultry summer heat like someone who has lived there her whole life.

William Gay author of I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down Kingsbury's elegy to desire and redemption and the prices you ultimately pay for them catches the reader on the first page and continues to resonate in the mind long after the epilogue is finished. Kingsbury makes an auspicious arrival, and she isn't leaving anytime soon.

About the Author

Suzanne Kingsbury lived in Oxford, Mississippi, while writing and researching this, her first novel.