The summer of '39

by Miranda Seymour

"Nancy Brewster, a recluse living on the shore in New England, reflects on the baleful events that have cruelly shaped her life. As The Summer of '39 opens, she is writing her memoirs, largely to exorcise the "insanity" that for years kept her locked within a sanitarium. From her life in the bohemian world of Greenwich Village in the 1920s to her marriage to Chance Brewster, a luckless literary dreamer, to an ill-fated visit from strangers from across the Atlantic in the pivotal summer of 1939, Nancy's thoughts linger most deeply on her encounter with Isabel March, an enigmatic poet and practiced husband-stealer. Their friendship, while beginning auspiciously, ends in a tangle of divorce and madness. Soon Nancy's wistful, seemingly random memories carry us to a climax as startling and monstrous as any in contemporary fiction."--BOOK JACKET.