What a crazy summer in the northeast. Heat, monsoon rains, water in the basement, coming through the walls at 3:30 AM because the ground was so saturated it had nowhere else to go. On July 4th weekend, my sisters and I held a memorial service for my mother, and then, three weeks later, we gathered to celebrate our daughter’s wedding here in the Adirondack mountains. Grief and joy, love and loss. The end of one life and the beginning of a couple’s journey to build their own together. This is the wonderfully circuitous stuff that life is made of and, exhausting as it has been at times, I wouldn’t want it any other way. While I’ve been unable to read at my usual pace this summer, I’d planned ahead, knowing there would be many personal demands. So, if you’re looking for a good tale to take you away, hopefully there’s something for every reader on this list. My wish for you is that you’re having the summer of your dreams. Or at least kicking back and slowing the pace at times. Fiction: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese This sweeping novel, from the best-selling author of “Cutting for Stone,” takes in three generations of an Indian family from 1900 to 1977. Each generation has been touched by something called “The Condition,” a curse where water is a dangerous substance, harming or drowning people randomly in each generation. As this books winds like a river through love and loss, the backdrop of British-ruled India, the Partition and independence, it is about so much more than family. Each character is finely drawn, embedded and woven into the others like a tapestry. Read as a parable, there are so many lessons in the passage of time, the miracle of medicine and faith, tragedies and fates, that it is almost impossible to describe the breadth and brilliance of this book. I didn’t want it to end and thought about it long after I closed the last page. Fiction: The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman Hoffman continually delivers fiction laced with magic, history and character development that keeps you engaged. Returning to the evocative New England landscape of the Berkshires, this novel is about the stories women tell and how they can save us. When Ivy becomes pregnant at college, the father turns his back, and her parents threaten to send her away to have the baby. She ends up in an oppressive cult in Western Massachusetts and marries the cult leader. When her baby Mia is born, the rules of the cult deem that she “belongs to the community.” Books and the outside world are considered evil, but Mia finds her way to the library where she reads The Scarlett Letter and learns how reading can (literally) transport you to other worlds. I won’t say any more, but that’s the magic part that Hoffman does so well. Historical Fiction: California Golden by Melanie Benjamin Based on the real-life experiences of female surfers in the 1960’s, Benjamin has mined the endless summer, wave obsessed, highly sexist and racist world of surfing that took place during the “Gidget” years as they gave way to the drug and cult crazed 60’s and the Vietnam war. Carol Donnelly is a legendary female surfer in a man’s world, at a time when women were expected to be housewives. When she becomes pregnant, she marries her boyfriend Bob, ending the unconventional life she had hoped to lead. Bob is sent to fight in WW2 and Carol finds a way to include her two daughters, Mindy and Ginger, in her bohemian beach life. When Bob returns, she takes a solo surfing safari to Hawaii, where she earns fame and finds herself. As the girls grow up, their lives diverge, one becoming a surfer and actress as the other, Ginger, falls into a life of drugs as the girlfriend of a violent drug dealer. The story follows each of the women and then circles back to cinch them all together for an ending that finds redemption in an imperfect world. Fiction: Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman It’s so hard to describe this fantastical but sometimes historic novel that requires the suspension of disbelief in all the right ways. The story opens in 2004, with Al Gore entering his second term as the announcement is made that science has discovered a cure for death. The protagonist, Martin, is living in a guest house of a well-known lawyer, writing a book and licking his wounds after a divorce. When he discovers that his landlord is in on the “secret,” the books takes some wonderful turns and plunges into rabbit holes on how we view history. The author takes us back to how one bullet in the Civil War changed the course of the country and he follows the through line along to the toppling of monuments less than a decade ago. This book is a smart, engrossing read. Memoir: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner Losing your mother at an early age is a fundamental wound. This wonderfully layered and heartfelt memoir cuts to the pain of that experience as it explores the complex relationship between a daughter trying to find and define herself as she becomes an adult. Born to a Korean mother and an American father, Zauner is judgmental of so many things about her mother’s choices and the way she lives her life. What connects them, while she is alive and after her death, is their relationship to food and all of the incredible Korean dishes her mother cooks for every occasion. Food is love in this story and some of the descriptions made my mouth water. The beautiful arc of this memoir is how she comes to love and appreciate her mother as the heart and soul of the family. When she visits her Korean relatives to learn more about her mother’s life, she moves closer to healing as she takes the stage (literally as a touring musician) of her own life and follows […]