"Tense, atmospheric, and gorgeously written, The Summer Country is a
novel to savor!" - Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of
The Huntress and
The Alice Network
A brilliant, multigenerational saga in the tradition of The Thorn
Birds and North and South, New York Times bestselling historical
novelist Lauren Willig delivers her biggest, boldest, and most ambitious
novel yet--a sweeping Victorian epic of lost love, lies, jealousy, and
rebellion set in colonial Barbados.
Barbados, 1854: Emily Dawson has always been the poor cousin in a
prosperous English merchant clan-- merely a vicar's daughter, and a
reform-minded vicar's daughter, at that. Everyone knows that the
family's lucrative shipping business will go to her cousin, Adam, one
day. But when her grandfather dies, Emily receives an unexpected
inheritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados--a plantation her
grandfather never told anyone he owned.
When Emily accompanies her cousin and his new wife to Barbados, she
finds Peverills a burnt-out shell, reduced to ruins in 1816, when a
rising of enslaved people sent the island up in flames. Rumors swirl
around the derelict plantation; people whisper of ghosts.
Why would her practical-minded grandfather leave her a property in
ruins? Why are the neighboring plantation owners, the Davenants, so
eager to acquire Peverills? The answer lies in the past-- a tangled
history of lies, greed, clandestine love, heartbreaking betrayal, and a
bold bid for freedom.
THE SUMMER COUNTRY will beguile readers with its rendering of families,
heartbreak, and the endurance of hope against all odds.
