Farewell, Summer

This article is about the Santmyer novella. For the Ray Bradbury novel, see Farewell Summer. For the flower, see Goldenrod.
Farewell, Summer

Cover, first edition
Author Helen Hooven Santmyer
Illustrator Deborah Healy
Cover artist Deborah Healy
Country United States
Language English
Genre Psychological fiction
Publisher Houghton Mifflin
Publication date
 1988
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 132 pp
ISBN 0-06-015889-1

Farewell, Summer is a novella by Helen Hooven Santmyer. Written after her first two novels,[1] it was not published until after Santmyer's death. The novella tells the 1935 memories of Elizabeth Lane about the summer of 1905, when she had been eleven and in love with her "Wild West cousin" Steve Van Doren, who was romancing, to no avail, another cousin, Damaris, who is intent on never marrying and is planning on becoming a nun. The 1935 Elizabeth now understands what the 1905 Elizabeth was actually seeing.

At the time of her 1984 fame, Santmyer, aged 88, no longer remembered the novella, but a niece remembered seeing the manuscript, and a search was made for it amongst her papers.[2]

The brief plot summary that Theresa Stevens, the writer character in Santmyer's "...And Ladies of the Club", gives for her second book describes a woman who remembers twenty years back a romancing that she had been too young to understand at the time.

Plot summary

In 1935, Elizabeth Lake, a 41-year-old academic feels compelled to return to Sunbury, Ohio, where she had sometimes stayed with her maternal grandparents as a child. Intending to do some professional writing, she runs into her cousin Tune, whom she had not seen since she was last in Sunbury thirty years before. In his 90s, Tune tells Elizabeth she ought to write down the story of the old days of the town, which sets Elizabeth to recalling her cousin Steve and the mistake of hers that contributed to his death.

Twenty-one-year-old Steve arrives from Texas after the death of his father. He is only able to find a little bit of work. He falls in love with Damaris. While she is attracted to Steve, she is too frightened of uncertainty to contemplate marriage, and intends to become a nun.

Crazy cousin Tobias, called Tobe or Bias, wounded at Chickamauga, is dead set on digging up the thousand dollars in gold he is certain he buried after the War, but regarding which he has absolutely no memory of the location. In order to "cure" Bias of his obsession, Steve buries his complete earnings of a hundred dollars in gold coins, mixed with shiny pennies: he is certain Bias with his poor vision and hands will be unable to realize the trickery. But indeed Bias does, and is so angry that someone stole from him, that he hurls the coins down the outhouse's toilet.

In hiding, Elizabeth overhears the last conversation between Steve and Damaris, where she rejects his marriage proposal while admitting that she loves him. The episode with the coins figures in her reasoning. Steve is dejected, but no one other than Elizabeth and Damaris knows why, and he announces that he plans to return to Texas. Damaris asks Elizabeth to pass on a message to Steve, that she will "always be faithful", which Elizabeth is aware is meant to sound like a reference to her religion to everybody, but which Steve will know means him. Elizabeth does not pass on the message.

Steve disappears, leaving a note, saying he apologizes for not repeating his plans to return to Texas, since it would sound like asking for money. Elizabeth's grandmother finds that perplexing, until Elizabeth explains about the cousin Bias incident. Steven dies in an accident while "riding the rods".

Elizabeth spends the following Christmas with her parents in England. They receive a letter from Sunbury, mentioning Damaris' upcoming marriage.

Reception

Farewell, Summer is a novella that relieves its reader of emotional upheavals ... it amuses with fond childhood memories.
— Rose Russell Stewart, Toledo Blade[3]
[It is a] stylistically dated but curiously engaging story...
— –, Kirkus Reviews[4]
The author shines in her loving recollections of turn-of-the-century Ohio and her exploration of the ties that bind and break families.
— –, Publishers Weekly[5]
Santmyer's fans will enjoy this slim, old-fashioned tale which pays careful attention to detail in describing family relationships.
— –, The State Journal-Register[6]

Notes

  1. ↑ Quay 1995, p. 103.
  2. ↑ Briggs-Bunting 1984.
  3. ↑ Stewart 1988.
  4. ↑ Kirkus Reviews 1988.
  5. ↑ Publishers Weekly 1988.
  6. ↑ State Journal-Register 1988.

Further reading

Book reviews

On Santmyer

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