The Summer After June

Ashley Warlick’s prizewinning first novel, THE DISTANCE FROM THE HEART OF THINGS, won nationwide acclaim for its portrayal of a young woman both smart and loving. Gail Godwin declared it “an occasion for rejoicing, as fresh and needed as rain after a drought.” THE SUMMER AFTER JUNE also centers on a woman who thinks fast and trusts herself, in a page-turning story that stretches over a feverish southern summer. Lindy Jain is pragmatic, willful, and drawn up short on the threshold of happiness. When her beloved sister, June, is murdered in the months before Lindy is to be married, nothing can be made right again. In a desperate decision, Lindy abandons her hometown of Charlotte — her job, her fiance, her shattered family, and her shifty brother-in-law — for the heat of the Texas coast and the chance to leave her grief behind. She takes with her the one thing in the world that still ties her to her sister: June’s son, not yet a year old. Her destination is Galveston and her ailing grandmother’s huge, vacant house, where she hopes to disappear. But Galveston is not as sparkling and simple a place as it was when Lindy played there as a child, and newfound romance takes her completely by surprise. What she wants is to start over clean, but what she learns is how enduring our ties are to the ones we love, across time, across distance, and ultimately across death itself.