Summer Island: A Novel
What happens when the daughter who never forgave her mother is forced to see her in a different light? Ruby Bridge has spent years turning her resentment toward her famous mother, Nora, into comedy. But when Nora is injured and a magazine offers Ruby a fortune to write a tell-all about her, Ruby returns home under false pretenses to care for the woman she hasn’t spoken to in years. Back on Summer Island, old memories and buried truths begin to reshape Ruby’s story. True Colors is a moving exploration of family, forgiveness, love, and the complicated bonds that can endure even after years apart.
- Release Date
- 2001
- Publisher
- Crown
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Our Review
About the book
Ruby Bridge, a struggling stand-up comic, has spent years resenting her mother Nora, a beloved radio host and advice columnist who walked out on the family. When a scandal breaks, Ruby agrees to write a tell-all about her; then a car accident leaves Nora in need of care, and Ruby reluctantly joins her at the family’s old retreat on Summer Island, Washington.
Our review
An early Kristin Hannah about a mother, a daughter, and the island where neither of them can avoid the other any longer.
Summer Island is Hannah before the big historical epics, working in a smaller and more intimate key. The setup is reliable family drama: an angry adult daughter, a mother with a public image and private regrets, and a beautiful setting that forces them into the same house. Ruby’s sharp, defensive humor gives the early chapters some bite, and the island itself is rendered with real affection.
Where the book is weaker is in its predictability. You can see the reconciliation coming from a long way off, and the romantic subplot feels more like an obligation of the genre than something the story needs. Still, Hannah already shows her gift for portraying how family members misread one another, and the central mother-daughter thaw is handled with warmth rather than easy sentiment.
What we loved
- A prickly, funny heroine who resists easy sympathy
- Atmospheric Pacific Northwest island setting
- A thoughtful look at how children judge their parents
Keep in mind
- Highly predictable arc and resolution
- Romance subplot feels tacked on
Read it if you like
On Mystic Lake, Firefly Lane, fans of cozy mother-daughter family drama
The verdict
A comforting, if predictable, early Hannah that shows the emotional instincts she would later sharpen in her bigger novels.
