Driftwood Summer by Patti Callahan Henry

Summertime is perfect for reading, longer days, slower pace and vacation time.  More daylight hours and hot weather doesn’t mean that books have to be “lite.”  In fact a good read may have a summer setting but still can be considered literature.  Patti Callahan Henry’s Driftwood Summer is an exceptional example with well-developed characters inspiring empathy, an interesting location along the seashore (Palmetto Beach), a struggle to save the family bookstore and a storyline that keeps the pages turning.

Sister fiction and memoirs are proliferating faster than corn and peaches reaching maturity in the summer.  Driftwood Summer’s protagonists, Riley, Maisy and Adalee Sheffield have the usual love/hate relationships but are bound together by their mother, Kitsy, the manipulative sort who tells her daughters everything that is wrong with them under the guise of love.  When grown-up Riley, a single mother, asks Kitsy to “quit talking to me like I was 12 years old.” Kitsy responds with, “God, sometimes I wish you were. Then I could change so much about what happened.”

As the novel opens, planning for week of festivities to fete Driftwood Cottage’s 200th anniversary is in the works to raise awareness and funds to keep the bookstore in business.  Kitsy has had an accident and is bedridden while all the planning goes on around her much to her dismay.  After all she is the only one who knows how to do everything absolutely perfectly, at least that what’s she tells her daughters. 

Maisy and Adalee, who have escaped their overwhelming matriarch by leaving town and creating their own lives, are on their way home (albeit not with much enthusiasm) to help Riley plan the events.  The cottage was the family home of Mack Logan, the love interest of both Riley and Maisy when they were teenagers.  Kitsy turned Driftwood Cottage into a cozy bookstore and Callahan Henry’s description of the reading nooks, multiple book groups and the well-read staff make one want to venture out in search of this independent bookstore, snuggle up into one of the mismatched arm chairs and get knee deep into a great book. The bookstore is populated with customers whose hilariously quirky ways lend to the overall story and contribute to the raison d’être for keeping the store alive.

Each sister’s character unfolds psychologically and with respect to jobs, boyfriends, and relationships between each other.  The author moves seamlessly between the present and the past causing no confusion for the reader and the time frames spur the story line along with not a wasted word.

Mack Logan returns to Palmetto Beach for the anniversary party and to resolve his relationships with the sisters.  The reader is cheering the characters along for a much deserved romantic outcome.  Love moves in and out in the present day much as the snowbirds pack and unpack their homes annually.  Let’s just say that the end is deliciously satisfying.

Reading Driftwood Summer inspires one to dip back into Callahan Henry’s previous novels for additional eloquent and rewarding stories.  This reviewer eagerly awaits the author’s next book and hopes it will be out before next summer.

About the Author

Patti Callahan Henry (www.patticallahanhenry.com) lives along the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta, Georgia.  Nominated for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Fiction Novel of the Years, she has also been short-listed for the Townsend Prize for Fiction.  Her previous nationally bestselling novels include Losing the Moon, Where the River Runs, When Light Breaks, Between the Tides and The Art of Keeping Secrets.  For the author's tour schedule please visit the publisher’s website www.penguin.com.


Driftwood Summer
Patti Callahan Henry
Penguin Group USA
ISBN # 978-0-451-22688-4