NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The author of the cherished bestseller On Mystic Lake returns with a poignant, funny,
luminous novel about a mother and daughter–the complex ties that bind them, the
past that separates them, and the healing that comes with forgiveness.

[Kristin] Hannah is superb at delving into the characters’ psyches and delineating nuances of feeling. -Washington Post Book World

Years ago,
Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. She has since
become a famous radio talk-show host and newspaper columnist beloved for her moral
advice. Her youngest daughter, Ruby, is a struggling comedienne who uses her famous
mother as fuel for her bitter, cynical humor. When the tabloids unearth a scandalous
secret from Nora’s past, their estrangement suddenly becomes dramatic: Nora is injured
in an accident and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a fortune to write a tell-all about
her mother. Under false pretenses, Ruby returns home to take care of the woman she
hasn’t spoken to for almost a decade.

Nora insists they retreat to Summer Island
in the San Juans, to the lovely old house on the water where Ruby grew up, a place
filled with childhood memories of love and joy and belonging. There Ruby is also
reunited with her first love and his brother. Once, the three of them had been best
friends, inseparable. Until the summer that Nora had left and everyone’s hearts had
been broken… .

What began as an expose evolves, as Ruby writes, into an exploration
of her family’s past. Nora is not the woman Ruby has hated all these years. Witty,
wise, and vulnerable, she is desperate to reconcile with her daughter. As the magazine
deadline draws near and Ruby finishes what has begun to seem to her an act of brutal
betrayal, she is forced to grow up and at last to look at her mother–and herself–through
the eyes of a woman. And she must, finally, allow herself to love.

Summer Island is a beautiful novel, funny, tender, sad, and ultimately triumphant.