Re-Introducing “The Summer Country”

Some time ago, I went through my blog and unpublished a whole slew of posts related to unfinished novel projects. I was genuinely unsure whether these particular books would ever be finished or not, and I (a) didn’t like the idea of blog readers maybe getting interested and hoping to read the finished story, and then being disappointed when it never came; and (b) was depressed myself by looking at all those posts, reminders of what I saw as a string of failures.

Fast-forward to the present. At least one of those unfinished manuscripts remains decently archived as an Early Work (primarily useful in having taught me how to write a book and how not to write a book); but a couple of the others—to my own surprise—have since taken a new lease on life. I’m actually not sorry I unpublished those old blog posts. It took off some of the pressure of feeling that I needed to finish those books as soon as I could because I’d publicly committed to them…and it also means I now have the pleasure of digging some of that old material out of the archives and sharing it again, as I hopefully inch closer to finally being able to share at least one of those books with the world.

If you’ve been around here a long time you may remember The Summer Country. It was one of those ideas that dropped on me out of nowhere, which I had to run with simply because it entranced me too much not to. It’s a middle-grade, non-magical children’s historical fantasy set in Edwardian-era New York, about five orphaned siblings living with an uncle, and their adventures involving dreams curiously connected to the bedtime stories told by their oldest sister. The best way I can describe it is that if you love the children’s classics of E. Nesbit, J.M. Barrie, France Hodgson Burnett, A.A. Milne, Elizabeth Enright, and C.S. Lewis, this should be the book for you. In fact, one of the joys of writing this story has been recognizing the subtle and not-so-subtle influences of the books I loved through childhood shaping my own vision and style.

Here’s some of the snippets I originally shared when I was drafting The Summer Country several years ago, polished up a bit to match the edits I’ve done since:

“Why, to smell the flowers,” shouted the Little Old Man, trying to use his walking-stick as a megaphone and then realizing it wouldn’t work. “You’re looking for the garden, aren’t you? Well, you certainly chose the hard way in, but it’s there all right. Just keep going right—I mean left! Left. Yes, that’s right.”

*

There were plenty of rooms in Uncle Timothy’s house, Morrie had once observed darkly, leaving it to be concluded that there was something else missing.

*

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Butler in a voice of genteel surprise, which made her sound like she was a long way off from the confusion, perhaps viewing it through an opera-glass. “And what is all this?”

*

And when he had gone out she slipped into the front parlor, leaving the others still chattering in the dining-room, and watched from behind the lace curtains as he went down the street along the sidewalk, with his head bent a little. Nobody should walk with their head bent that early in the morning.

*

“Perhaps I’m just too civilized,” said the Gentleman Traveler, “but I don’t exactly relish the idea of being close to the ground. It’s dusty.” He glanced down at his immaculate patent-leather shoes.

*

In the doorway she remembered something and turned back. “Oh, Uncle Timothy, I forgot—Cook has given notice.”

This time Uncle Timothy put down his paper. “What for?”

“I think she said something about the meals being irregular.”

Peggy had a very good vocabulary. What the cook had really said was a long speech without stopping for breath about houses where meals were never eaten at the same time twice in a week and had to be warmed over so many times of an evening that they couldn’t hardly be called meals at all.

Status of this project? Interesting question. I finished the first draft early last year, got a developmental edit on it, let it sit for a bit, and now I’m doing some revisions. I don’t know exactly what route to publication I’m going to take yet. I feel like this book needs something a little bit different than anything I’ve done so far—I’m considering possibly exploring the idea of a hybrid or small press. But I feel more confident now that some way, sometime, you’ll be able to read the finished product.