In another stand alone novel, the author of the Tess Monaghan series shows once again how adeptly she handles characters at odds with themselves and with those around him. In the late seventies, brothers Tim, Sean and Go-Go (Gordon) formed a unique friendship with best friends Mickey and Gwen and spent their last summer of freedom roaming the woods in the exurbs of Baltimore until the night of Hurricane David when they are witness to something, a secret they harbor, as do their parents, into adulthood, but must face thirty years later when Go-Go dies, slamming his car into a concrete barrier, drunk after several years of sobriety. Gwen has left her husband and daughter to care for her father who has broken his hip; she has plans on divorcing her husband who refuses to consent. When the four reunite for Go-Go’s funeral, they realize that the events of 1979 have shaped their futures and relationships in unexpected ways, and they come to realize that events of that summer did not unfold as they remember, or knew, and that one of them may be more culpable in Go-Go’s life failings since then and now in his death.
Lippman writes with extreme subtlety, offering clues that are not immediately apparent, but return in “aha” moments later in the narrative. She slowly reveals layers bit by bit, some things seemingly unimportant at the moment, but she wastes nothing and everything ties together in the end. What should have been an innocent summer of freedom turns into a string of events that changes the five of them forever. Fans of Tess Monaghan, now a new mother, will be pleased to see she makes a cameo in the story.
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