Monroe - The Summer Wind

The Summers End Excerpt

Praise for the first novel in the Lowcountry Summer Trilogy

The Summer Girls

Monroe knows her characters like no one else could, and her portrayals of the summer girls are subtle, realistic, carefully crafted, and pitch-perfect.

Publishers Weekly

More than just a beautifully written, moving portrayal of three sisters finding themselves and each other after years of separation... [ The Summer Girls ] deals head-on with significant issues so skillfully woven into the narrative that I often stopped to consider the import of what Id just read. If youre a dedicated environmentalist, this book is a must-read. If youre just someone who enjoys a good story, youll get that, too, and much more.

New York Times bestselling author Cassandra King

This book contains drama, humor, and romance which any good summer read does. Plus it has the message about the care and treatment of dolphins. Monroe is an expert at making this blend, and The Summer Girls is one of her most successful efforts.

The Huffington Post

A song of praise to the bottle-nosed dolphins that bring so much joy to the men and women who gaze at the creeks and rivers of the lowcountry each evening.

New York Times bestselling author Pat Conroy

Mary Alice Monroe at her best.... The Summer Girls reminded me of what I love about Southern fiction.

Heroes and Heartbreakers

A captivating story of how the ocean and a charismatic dolphin reunite sisters in the alluring ecological setting of the lowcountry of South Carolina. The story resonates on a personal level and, moreover, delivers a powerful reminder of the importance of protecting dolphins and the environment in which they live.

Patricia Fair, director, Marine Mammal Program, NOAA

Also by Mary Alice Monroe

LOWCOUNTRY SUMMER TRILOGY

The Summer Girls

Beach House Memories

The Butterflys Daughter

Last Light over Carolina

Time Is a River

Gallery Books

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2014 by Mary Alice Monroe, Ltd.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition June 2014

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Cover design by Laywan Kwan

Cover images: photo of woman Tim Pannell/Corbis;

photo of grass Vera Kailov/Alamy

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Monroe, Mary Alice.

The summer wind / Mary Alice Monroe.

pages cm.(The lowcountry summer trilogy)

1. GrandmothersFiction.2. GranddaughtersFiction.3. SistersFiction. 4. Self-realization in womenFiction.5. Sullivans Island (S.C. : Island)Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction.7. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3563.O529S88 2014

813'.54dc23 2014008588

ISBN 978-1-4767-7002-4

ISBN 978-1-4767-0901-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4767-0904-8 (ebook)

For Kimberly Whalen and Robert Gottlieb

J uly was said to be the hottest month of the year in Charleston, and after enduring eighty Southern summers, Marietta Muir, or Mamaw, as her family affectionately called her, readily agreed. She delicately dabbed at her upper lip and forehead with her handkerchief, then waved to shoo off a pesky mosquito. Southern summers meant heat, humidity, and bugs. But being out on Sullivans Island, sitting in the shade of a live oak tree, sipping iced tea, and waiting for the occasional offshore breeze was, for her, the very definition of summer. She sighed heavily. The ancient oak spread its mighty limbs so far and wide, Marietta felt cradled in its protective embrace. Still, the air was especially languid this morning, so thick and cloyingly scented with jasmine that it was a battle to keep her eyelids from drooping. A gust of wind from the ocean carried the sweet scent of the grass and cooled the moist hairs along her neck.

She set the needlepoint pattern on her lap to remove her glasses and rub her eyes. Cursed old age. It was getting harder and harder to see her stitches, she thought with a sigh. Glancing at Lucille beside her on the screened porch of the guesthouse that Lucille called home, she saw her friend bent over the base of a sweetgrass basket, her strong hands weaving the fragile strands into the pattern, sewing each row tight with palmetto fronds. A small pile of the grass lay in her lap, while a generous heap sat at her feet in a plastic bag, along with another bag of long-leaf pine needles.

Seeing her longtime companions hands lovingly weaving together the disparate grasses into an object of beauty made Marietta think again how imperative her challenge was this summer: to entwine her three very different granddaughters with Sea Breeze once again. Her summer girls .

Mamaw sighed softly to herself. They were hardly girls any longer. Dora was thirty-six, Carson thirty-three, and Harper twenty-eightwomen now. Back when they were young girls and spent summers together they had been close, as sisters should be. Over the years, however, theyd become more strangers than sisters. Half-sisters, Marietta corrected herself, shuddering at the nuance of the term. As if by only sharing a father, the womens bond was somehow less. Sisters were sisters and blood was blood, after all. She had succeeded in corralling all three women to Sea Breeze in June for the summer, but here it was, only early July, and Carson was already off to Florida while Dora was fixing on returning to Summerville. And Harper... that New Yorker had her sights set north.

I wonder if Carson made it to Florida yet, Lucille said without looking up. Her fingers moved steadily, weaving row after row.

Mamaw half smiled, thinking how Lucilles mind and her own were in sync... again. Lucille had been hired as her housekeeper some fifty years back, when Marietta was a young bride in Charleston. Theyd shared a lifetime of ups and downs, births, deaths, scandals, and joys. Now that they were old women, Lucille had become more a confidante than an employee. Truth was, Lucille was her closest friend.