Tessa Gray’s life changes forever when she loses her four-year-old daughter Abby in a hit-and-run accident outside her preschool. As she grapples with a terrible grief, made worse by the police’s insistence that the case is unsolvable, she finds her only solace in Celia Reed, the grief counselor her husband’s pushed her to see, and in the journal she’s begun keeping, where she compulsively counts the “days without Abby” and maps out her plan for catching the driver who tore her family apart.

Celia struggles to keep Tessa from getting caught up in a bleak crusade for answers, but she finds that their sessions open the door to emotions she’s spent years ignoring, forcing her to face the rising tensions in her own life-- her troubled teenage son, her alcoholic ex-husband, and her fragile new marriage. Celia soon begins to realize that she must come to terms with the tragic mistakes of her own past and the choices that have led her family to the brink of destruction.

Life Without Summer is a haunting portrait of two women whose lives converge unexpectedly when the answers one needs turn out to be the other's only chance for peace.

Praise

"A spellbinding tale of loss and hard-won redemption...Griffin's carefully crafted characters ring heartbreakingly true and her finely wrought plot will snare readers from the first page." 

--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Stirringly believable...A strong addition to women’s' fiction."

--Booklist

"[Griffin] parlays her knowledge of family dynamics into a moving tale of two women."

--Hartford Courant

"Fearless insight...readers will be demanding more from this new perspective in fiction."

--Bookreporter.com

"A remarkable debut novel."

--Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of Firefly Lane and True Colors

"This is an insightful, honest book about the nature of grief, loss, love, marriage and divorce...Lynne Griffin has given readers the gift of a compelling novel of character and of life."

--Jeanne Ray, New York Times bestselling author of Julie and Romeo and Eat Cake
"I could not stop reading!!!! Life Without Summer is what I consider the epitome of smart women's fiction...I found it utterly real and compelling..A deeply satisfying book that pulls us through the lives of two very different women any one of which could be ourselves." --Patricia Wood, author of Lottery

"Part who-dunnit, part psychological portraiture, part an argument for the necessity of "facing" grief...Griffin is a master of the crisp and telling detail, and her troubled main characters are wonderfully human." --Martha Moody, national bestselling author of Best Friends and The Office of Desire

About the Author(s)

Lynne Griffin

Lynne Griffin is the author of the novel, Sea Escape, and the parenting guide, Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment. She lives outside Boston, Massachusetts with her family.

photo: © Jerry Bauer

Visit Lynne Griffin's Website