Summer Blue

by Floyd Skloot

Timothy Packard, a widower, offers to take his teenage daughter, Jill, on a summer tour of beaches in Long Island, Michigan, and Oregon if she can finish school without further incidents

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1994

About the author

Floyd was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1947, and moved to Long Beach, NY, ten years later. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College with a B.A. in English, and completed an M.A. in English at Southern Illinois University, where he studied with the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella. From 1972 until becoming disabled by viral-borne brain damage in 1988, Floyd worked in the field of public policy in Illinois, Washington, and Oregon. He began publishing poetry in 1970, fiction in 1975, and essays in 1990. His work has appeared in many major literary journals in the US and abroad. His seventeen books have won wide acclaim and numerous awards, and are included in many high school and college curricula. In May, 2006 he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Franklin & Marshall College.


An Oregonian since 1984, Floyd moved from Portland to rural Amity when he married Beverly Hallberg in 1993. They lived in a cedar yurt in the middle of twenty hilly acres of woods for 13 years before moving back to Portland.


Floyd's daughter, the nonfiction writer Rebecca Skloot, lives in Memphis, TN, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Memphis and works as a freelance writer. Her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was published by Crown Books in February, 2010 and became an immediate NY Times and Indie Bound bestseller. Her work has been included in the Best Creative Nonfiction, Best Food Writing and Women’s Best Friend anthologies as well as appearing regularly in the New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, O: Oprah’s Magazine and elsewhere. Her boyfriend, writer and actor David Prete, author of Say That to My Face (Norton, 2003), recently completed his second book of fiction and teaches writers how to improve their public reading skills. Floyd's stepson, Matthew Coale, lives with his wife and two children in Vancouver, Washington.


Floyd's current projects include new poems and essays that are slowly shaping into a new book.

Reviews

[2waag · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the simplicity of this book. The way it describes Michigan, Long Island & Oregon is beautiful and makes you feel like you’re actually there. The plot was good and got intense in some instances which gave the book a nice balance. I rated it 3 stars because it was a little slow. I wanted to give up reading it so many times but pushed through. However I thought the relationship between Timothy and his daughter was very realistic and heartwarming. Although I’m 27 I still don’t have a clue about drugs and what the effects are…. there was a lot of drug descriptions that opened my eyes quite a bit. All in all it was a good book.. it just moves at a mellow pace and you may find your mind wandering.