Review: The Myth of Perpetual Summer

The Myth of Perpetual Summer by Susan Crandall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tallulah James has come home to Mississippi after a long absence and estrangement from her family. The family she has struggled to understand throughout her young life is facing another crisis and it is left to Lulie to help pick up the pieces. During her trip home Lulie reflects on her past as a young teenage girl growing up on a pecan grove in rural Mississippi in the 60s. She is the 2nd of four kids in a dysfunctional home where her mother was constantly gone and her father was battling emotional issues. Her parent's relationship was tumultuous. Lulie's lone source of stability has been her grandmother who holds to southern manners and rules. Granny James, however, is holding some family secrets that could explain her father's erratic behavior and her broken family.

This is another coming of age story by Susan Crandall who wrote Whistling Past the Graveyard. It holds up against Crandall's earlier works but is much darker. Its overall message seems to be to resolve the burdens of the past so that they don't carry emotional weight throughout life. It is not my favorite of Crandall's books that I have read so far but was still worth the read.

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