By Luanne Rice
Summer’s Child begins in New England where a young pregnant woman, Mara Jameson, disappears without a trace from her grandmother’s garden.Years later, people still remember her glowing smile and are still trying to figure out what actually happened. No body was found, though there were traces of blood at Mara’s home. Her husband, Edward Hunter, was accused of killing her, but with no body and no proof, the case was unsolved.
Police Detective Patrick Murphy was obsessed with solving the case, so much so he lost his wife in the process. He continued to look for clues after he retired.
The book’s chapters alternate between the town Mara disappeared from and the people left behind, and the people in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia.
Though the book is well written, it is a little predictable. Early on, I had the feeling one of two women with nine-year-old girls in the Nova Scotia village was actually Mara in hiding, and the romance in the book was akin to the relationship between Novalee Nation and Forney in the movie “Where the Heart is.” The circumstance and characters are a little different, but the relationship develops in a similar way.
There were some surprises along the way, though the ending is disappointing. I wanted to know more about Edward Hunter and how everything really ended.
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