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Summers Past

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When Seth Keegan returned home to New Zealand after years in prison, he fully expected his mother's scorn and the neighbors' glares. That much, he supposed, he'd earned. But he was shocked to find the woman he'd once loved living high in his family house, her young daughter mysteriously the heir to the Keegan fortune.

252 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 2, 1993

16 people want to read

About the author

Laurey Bright

60 books37 followers
Laurey Bright is another pen name of Daphne Clair.

Daphne Clair de Jong decided to be a writer when she was eight years old and won her first literary prize for a school essay. Her first short story was published when she was sixteen and she's been writing and publishing ever since. Nowadays she earns her living from writing, something her well-meaning teachers and guidance counsellors warned her she would never achieve in New Zealand. Her short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and a collection of them was presented in Crossing the Bar, published by David Ling, where they garnered wide praise.

In 1976, Daphne's first full-length romantic novel was published by Mills & Boon as Return to Love. Since then she has produced a steady output of romance set in New Zealand, occasionally Australia or on imaginary Pacific islands. As Laurey Bright she also writes for Silhouette Books. Her romances often appear on American stores' romance best-seller lists and she has been a Rita contest finalist, as well as winning and being placed in several other romance writing contests. Her other writing includes non-fiction, poetry and long historical fiction, She also is an active defender of the ideology of Feminists for Life, and she has written articles about it.

Since then she has won other literary prizes both in her native New Zealand and other countries. These include the prestigious Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award, with Dying Light, a story about Alzheimer's Disease, which was filmed by Robyn Murphy Productions and shown at film festivals in several countries. (Starring Sara McLeod, Sam's wife in Lord of the Rings).

Daphne is often asked to tutor courses in creative writing, and with Robyn Donald she teachs romance writing weekend courses in her home in the "winterless north" of in New Zealand. Daphne lives with her Netherlands-born husband in a farmlet, grazing livestock, growing their own fruit and vegetables and making their large home available to other writers as a centre for writers' workshops and retreats. Their five children, one of them an orphan from Hong Kong, have left home but drift back at irregular intervals. She enjoys cooking special meals but her cake-making is limited to three never-fail recipes. Her children maintain they have no memory of her baking for them except on birthdays, when she would produce, on request, cakes shaped into trains, clowns, fairytale houses and, once, even a windmill, in deference to their Dutch heritage from their father.

Daphne frequently makes and breaks resolutions to indulge in some hearty outdoor activity, and loves to sniff strong black coffee but never drinks it. After a day at her desk she will happily watch re-runs of favourite TV shows. Usually she goes to bed early with a book which may be anything from a paperback romance or suspense novel to history, sociology or literary theory.

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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Profile Image for ANGELIA.
1,435 reviews12 followers
February 2, 2026
Without a doubt the most pathetic book I've ever read (and I've read some real losers, so that tells you something!) Every single character was crap except the kid, and the best moment in the story was when the old lady (the H's piece of turd mother) croaked! YAHOO!!! Too bad the H and h didn't do the same. I couldn't stand either of them, it was a tossup as to who was the crappiest!

They had so many stop-and-start love scenes that when they finally hit then sheets for real, it's like "Who the f--k (pun intended) cares???

When you find yourself thinking both the H and h deserved what the selfish sicko brother dished out to them, that really tells you something!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews

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