Attention vacationers: Award-winning author Dean Bakopoulos (Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon) has served up a sultry story that fits perfectly in your carry-on.
“There was another life I might have had, but I am having this one.” The epigraph of Summerlong—a quote from Kazuo Ishiguru—is a fitting opening for this story of a disenchanted couple.
It all begins when Don Lowry, father of two, goes on an evening jog and collides with Amelia Benitez-Cooper, better known as ABC. For reasons he can’t seem to verbalize, Don spends an evening with a very sexy and emotionally unstable ABC, smoking pot and napping on a hammock. Meanwhile, his wife, Claire, meets Charlie Gulliver, a sometime actor and son of an esteemed professor at the local college. The two spend the evening in a pool, and come dangerously close to introducing infidelity into the Lowrys’ already rocky marriage.
As the steamy Iowa summer continues, the Lowrys’ relationship deteriorates. This is where Bakopoulos strays from a typical suburban love triangle (or is it a square?). This isn’t just a story of people enjoying a free-love bacchanal; Summerlong also explores the consequences and heartbreak of testing the limits of relationships.
This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
