Dear Librarians,
Raised on saltwater and sand and the particular force of New England summer storms, it was probably inevitable that my writing would eventually return there, but after a decade of writing about 19th Century London, 21st Century Rhode Island came as a surprise (though writing modern-day billionaires doesn’t take you too far afield from robber barons of old). Either way, sometimes an idea takes hold and refuses to let you go—that’s These Summer Storms.
In the summer of 2020, I was lucky enough to have a friend with a tiny beach house and a generous spirit. My husband, daughter, dog and I packed up our Brooklyn apartment and headed, masks and all, to the farm coast of Rhode Island, all wild thyme and stone walls overlooking Narragansett Bay and a collection of private and uninhabited islands I’d never thought much about when I was growing up.
The pandemic loomed that summer, and those strange islands were a welcome distraction as the ocean churned and the wind blew magnificent summer storms up the Bay. It wasn’t long before my Storms blew in, too—chaotic, dysfunctional, sharp tongued and wealthy. An eldest daughter desperate for approval, an only son and boy king, a youngest daughter allowed to dabble in crystals and whimsy, a mother with a cocktail in one hand and control slipping from the other. And Alice Storm, a daughter in exile—the one who got away. Or did she?
There was never a question that this was a contemporary story, and a departure from what I’d written before—the story of a family in the immediate aftermath of an unexpected loss, having to navigate what happened and what’s to come. But the book made itself mine immediately, all big characters and wild plots: a dead billionaire, an inheritance game, a family with its fill of juicy secrets, and a romance (or two) that match the heat of a Rhode Island summer (it’s still a Sarah MacLean novel, after all).
I’m grateful to you for taking a look, and hope it brings you some joy this year.
All best,
Sarah
