Set in Houser Banks, a fictional town in contemporary Mississippi, during a hot, steamy Deep South summer, this book is a wistful and haunting tale of first love and loss of innocence. Local heartbreaker 16-year-old Hayley Ellyson stumbles on her father’s friend Bo with the body of an armless black man in her house. Bo makes Haley into a conspirator, forcing her to help him bury the man and using the power of their secret to engage in a sexual relationship with her. The meat of the book concerns itself with Haley, her wild friend Riley and Riley’s black girlfriend, Crystal. The Fletcher Greel of the title is the judge’s son, a sensitive and responsible young man who falls in love with Haley and becomes enmeshed in the passion and angst of a summer long affair. Haley recognizes Fletcher’s innocence and loves him for it, while at the same time continuing her sordid relationship with Bo. But Haley’s secret is a grim shadow hanging over them all as they go to blues parties, get drunk and swim in the river. Riley and Crystal have to hide their relationship, and when they decide to make it public the racist elements of their society emerge with destructive results. The shallow grave of the black man is a metaphor for the racism which still exists in the Deep South, the stench of the crime infecting the entire story with a sense of inevitable nemesis. This is an atmospheric and lyrical first novel.
Kirkus UK
I think this writer was preborn and this novel predestined, and how patient is the world that waited for it to be written. If aching and beautiful stories can still change lives, even for a little while, then this one surely will.
Robert Olmstead author of River Dogs
Kingsbury’s elegy to desire and redemption and the prices you ultimately pay for them catches the reader on the first page and continues to resonate in the mind long after the epilogue is finished. Kingsbury makes an auspicious arrival, and she isn’t leaving anytime soon.
William Gay, author of I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down
Suzanne Kingsbury reminds us what it is to be young and in love. Her characters are real people, with hopes and fears and joys and sorrows, and some of them have dark secrets, but she lets us see inside their lives without blinking. Best of all, she knows how to tell a story, one that compels us to keep reading. A strong debut.
Larry Brown author of Fay
With language as lush and sensuous as her Mississippi setting, Suzanne Kingsbury weaves an unforgettable story, ripe with passion and loss. The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me is a brilliant debut by a very talented writer.
Jill McCorkle author of Carolina Moon
Kingsbury adds depth to the characters of Haley and Fletcher by alternating chapters between them and by going beyond standard teen lust to explore more unexpected, conflicting feelings. The young lovers spend the summer with their best friends, Riley White and his blues-singing black girlfriend, Crystal, who are increasingly harassed by the town’s rednecks. As the tension mounts, the lives of both pairs of star-crossed lovers are put in jeopardy. Kingsbury’s pacing is uneven, but her lush, evocative descriptions of river swimming, night driving, sweaty juke joints and cool country stores
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Publisher’s Weekly.
Soaked in the sweat of a summer in the Deep South of America, Kingsbury’s debut novel summons the literary ghosts of Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams and Harper Lee in a tale of forbidden love between a white boy and a black girl and youthful rebellion in a small town. Except that the setting is the 1980s and not the 1940s. As timeless in its evocation of racial, sexual and family tensions as it is in reflecting the coming-of-age realisations of its lead characters… Kingsbury has hardly tapped into her potential.
The Scotsman
The most vivid, drenched-in-place rendering of Mississippi isn’t some long-lost but newly found William Faulkner story. It’s a first novel by a lifelong New Englander, Suzanne Kingsbury. With lush, lovely language, Kingsbury evokes the sultry summer heat like someone who has lived there her whole life.
The Hartford Courant
“Compelling and wonderfully descriptive.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution
“A passionate, calculated, lyrical book.”
Providence Journal-Bulletin
“Absorbing novel of nascent love, racial tension, and criminal secrets…full of bittersweet moments that contain real danger under a taut surface of nostalgia and adolescent yearning. Kingsbury gives us a Southern landscape glazed in honey.”
Los Angeles Times
A haunting first novel…captivating…Kingsbury’s prose is measured and luminous.
Orlando Sentinel