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The Last Summer
A classic love story, "The Last Summer" chronicles a young man on the verge of growing up and an older woman running away from a life out of control.
It is the summer of 1968: The world is poised on the cusp of radical change. Politicians question the status quo, blacks react to decades of oppression, and students protest the injustices of war. Change is in the air, too, for 37-year-old single mother Claire Malek. She has just walked out on her rather cushy job in Washington, DC, as "special assistant" to Senator Bob Mallory. DC had become an impossible place for Claire, heavy with regrets and burdened with secrets she knew she could never divulge. Anxious for both escape and change, Claire packs her 15-year-old daughter, April, into her Camaro and heads to a small town on Cape Cod, where Claire takes a job as cub reporter on a twice-weekly newspaper called the "Covenant." She knows it's a big risk, but Claire is desperate for a new start and a new life, and the town and all it has to offer seem to be a good beginning.
For Lane Hillman, son of the publisher of the "Covenant," change is just beyond the horizon. Twenty-two years old and fresh out of Harvard, he's come home to celebrate the last summer of his youth and one final season as a reporter on his father's newspaper. In an effort to avoid the draft, and possible service in Vietnam, Lane has enlisted in VISTA -- the America-based Peace Corps -- and in the fall will begin a four-year stint working in the inner city of Detroit.
Claire's first day on the job is the same day Robert Kennedy is shot. Racial tensions around the country continue to erupt into violence and confrontation. But in a few days another more personal tragedy strikes the town as a young girl is found murdered -- the first such death there in more than twenty years -- and on the same day a teenage boy is found drowned under suspicious circumstances.
As Claire and Lane work together to try to make sense of the seemingly unrelated deaths, a closeness grows between them, and with it, the stirrings of sexual attraction. At first Claire resists, knowing that the fifteen years separating them is an unbridgeable gap, but before either of them realizes what's happening, she and Lane are swept up in a romantic passion that threatens to overwhelm them both.
As the summer progresses, so does their affair, and soon the whole town knows about it, including Lane's parents, who are not at all pleased with this turn of events, and April, Claire's daughter, who feels both awe and resentment at the changes the affair brings in her mother.
Before the summer ends, however, Claire and Lane will have to contend with more than the opinions of family and townsfolk. A shadowy figure responsible for the death of the young woman begins to fixate on someone new -- and the lovers find themselves in a race to save their own lives.
A work of great tenderness, taut suspense, and historical immediacy, "The Last Summer" is a captivating portrait of love and sacrifice.
It is the summer of 1968: The world is poised on the cusp of radical change. Politicians question the status quo, blacks react to decades of oppression, and students protest the injustices of war. Change is in the air, too, for 37-year-old single mother Claire Malek. She has just walked out on her rather cushy job in Washington, DC, as "special assistant" to Senator Bob Mallory. DC had become an impossible place for Claire, heavy with regrets and burdened with secrets she knew she could never divulge. Anxious for both escape and change, Claire packs her 15-year-old daughter, April, into her Camaro and heads to a small town on Cape Cod, where Claire takes a job as cub reporter on a twice-weekly newspaper called the "Covenant." She knows it's a big risk, but Claire is desperate for a new start and a new life, and the town and all it has to offer seem to be a good beginning.
For Lane Hillman, son of the publisher of the "Covenant," change is just beyond the horizon. Twenty-two years old and fresh out of Harvard, he's come home to celebrate the last summer of his youth and one final season as a reporter on his father's newspaper. In an effort to avoid the draft, and possible service in Vietnam, Lane has enlisted in VISTA -- the America-based Peace Corps -- and in the fall will begin a four-year stint working in the inner city of Detroit.
Claire's first day on the job is the same day Robert Kennedy is shot. Racial tensions around the country continue to erupt into violence and confrontation. But in a few days another more personal tragedy strikes the town as a young girl is found murdered -- the first such death there in more than twenty years -- and on the same day a teenage boy is found drowned under suspicious circumstances.
As Claire and Lane work together to try to make sense of the seemingly unrelated deaths, a closeness grows between them, and with it, the stirrings of sexual attraction. At first Claire resists, knowing that the fifteen years separating them is an unbridgeable gap, but before either of them realizes what's happening, she and Lane are swept up in a romantic passion that threatens to overwhelm them both.
As the summer progresses, so does their affair, and soon the whole town knows about it, including Lane's parents, who are not at all pleased with this turn of events, and April, Claire's daughter, who feels both awe and resentment at the changes the affair brings in her mother.
Before the summer ends, however, Claire and Lane will have to contend with more than the opinions of family and townsfolk. A shadowy figure responsible for the death of the young woman begins to fixate on someone new -- and the lovers find themselves in a race to save their own lives.
A work of great tenderness, taut suspense, and historical immediacy, "The Last Summer" is a captivating portrait of love and sacrifice.
Hardcover
First published July 2, 2002
4 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
About the author
John Hough Jr.
13 books70 followersJohn Hough, Jr. grew up in Falmouth, Massachusetts and now lives on Martha’s Vineyard. He is a graduate of Haverford College, a former VISTA volunteer, speech writer for Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland, and assistant to James Reston at the Washington Bureau of the New York Times. His grandfather and his father edited the Falmouth Enterprise and his great-uncle was for many years the editor of the Vineyard Gazette. Hough is the author of five previous novels, including
Seen the Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg, winner of the American Library Association's 2010 W. Y. Boyd Award, and three works of nonfiction.
Seen the Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg, winner of the American Library Association's 2010 W. Y. Boyd Award, and three works of nonfiction.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
August 22, 2009
I know my last review declared that Austenland was the perfect summer fluff reading, which is true, but I had to call it the perfect summer fluff reading to distinguish it from this book which is, as far as I am concerned, the PERFECT summer read.
I have been going to Cape Cod in the summer since I was a little girl so that now Cape Cod and summer are almost synonymous for me. So a novel set in the summer on Cape Cod and filled with the bittersweetness of a star-crossed romance is basically my ultimate summer read.
The story is set in the 1960s and begins just before Bobby Kennedy's assassination. The sense of innocence lost pervades the story and there is something nostalgic about the mood from beginning to end. The small town's football hero and golden boy has graduated from Harvard and is going off into the wide world at the end of the summer, while a mature woman who realizes she has never really known love at all is seeking a fresh start far from everything she knows. Their paths cross and of course they fall in love. Their love feels perfect, doomed and yet, in a way, made more perfect by its brevity.
The fact that all the activities are summer activities and all scenes are set in the landscape that surrounds me in the summers just intensified my enjoyment of the story.
I would have been perfectly happy with all that - but then there is a mystery, you get to go behind the scenes at a small newspaper and follow the woman as she learns the basics of being a good reporter and, in the end, you get a suspenseful, page turning plot that drives you through to the end.
I may have to re-read this book every summer, it's that good. At the very least I am going to endow my grandmother's Cape Cod house with a copy that hopefully summer guests will happen on for many summers to come.
I have been going to Cape Cod in the summer since I was a little girl so that now Cape Cod and summer are almost synonymous for me. So a novel set in the summer on Cape Cod and filled with the bittersweetness of a star-crossed romance is basically my ultimate summer read.
The story is set in the 1960s and begins just before Bobby Kennedy's assassination. The sense of innocence lost pervades the story and there is something nostalgic about the mood from beginning to end. The small town's football hero and golden boy has graduated from Harvard and is going off into the wide world at the end of the summer, while a mature woman who realizes she has never really known love at all is seeking a fresh start far from everything she knows. Their paths cross and of course they fall in love. Their love feels perfect, doomed and yet, in a way, made more perfect by its brevity.
The fact that all the activities are summer activities and all scenes are set in the landscape that surrounds me in the summers just intensified my enjoyment of the story.
I would have been perfectly happy with all that - but then there is a mystery, you get to go behind the scenes at a small newspaper and follow the woman as she learns the basics of being a good reporter and, in the end, you get a suspenseful, page turning plot that drives you through to the end.
I may have to re-read this book every summer, it's that good. At the very least I am going to endow my grandmother's Cape Cod house with a copy that hopefully summer guests will happen on for many summers to come.
September 8, 2019
Way more than chic lit that I thought this book would be.
August 30, 2020
Enjoyable enough read - Older woman much younger man - life turns out as it should.
August 13, 2019
I have had this book in my home library for a few years so decided to read it. The cover sounded pretty decent, about a lady that had worked for a senator but left abruptly after something happened. She moved to a small town and started working as a reporter for a newspaper. Shortly after, there is a murder and a drowning. She pairs up to work on stories with the son of the newspaper owner. They begin seeing each other on a personal level even though he is in his early twenties and she is in her mid thirties. I was disappointed that their relationship was about 80% of the story, with not much focus on the scandal, the drowning, nor the murder. But what the heck, I only paid $1 for it at Half Price Books!
May 29, 2023
A mother sets out from Texas to California with her children during the depression in hopes to find a better life. It is even more disheartening when she gets there. The challenges that she meets up with happens almost immediately. It is a great look back at that time and you can only imagine how hard it would be.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 29, 2018
I enjoyed the book, the writer's style, the way the story meandered around several mysteries of murder and culminated around a family, it's business, and undying love. I am not sure why the book hasn't had more reads/reviews, as it seemed worthwhile to me.
August 28, 2019
Mildly entertaining. Not the great beach read I was hoping for.
October 29, 2019
Boring!
January 14, 2021
such a beautiful book. more stories need to be told from this perspective.
July 14, 2022
Very disappointed. This story seemed to go nowhere. A couple of times I was tempted to not finish it. It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t good either. I do not recommend this book.
January 28, 2024
Really 2.75
December 29, 2025
slow paced. not enough action
March 6, 2024
Obsessed!! Love a good New England plot and appreciate the historic component as well
November 14, 2015
Wonderful! All the lessons John Hough teaches in his seminars can be found elegantly displayed in The Last Summer. Just like Claire's intellectual awakening to "the music of the printed page," John Hough transformed my understanding of novel writing. Look at the way he dramatized the description of the town by following the reporter hunting down a story. The action never stops as he weaves in scene and setting. Look at the way every color is highlighted with a unique descriptive modifier (wood-ash grey, limeade-green, sea-blue, battleship-grey, etc...) and a description of the light permeates every scene. Look at the diction: regional words like catercorner (in the Midwest it's kitty corner) or out-dated yiddish words like zaftig sexpot (in the Midwest it might be CORN-FED BEAUTY). Funny how the term 'coffee urn' seemed unfamiliar and almost funereal to a modern reader (born in 1966).
Hough used actual historical events to help develop his characters and also explain from many different perspectives what it felt like to live through those turbulent times. Like a true journalist, he avoided overt editorializing and let the facts of the story stand on their own. I loved the various ways people avoided the draft, like the vulgar tattoo salute and the M&M trick. My grandfather was a newspaperman back in the day and I remember touring the Quad City Times as a boy. The racket and speed of the press was impressive. We had to wear earplugs. I remember with fond affection my days working on my high school newspaper. Our adviser looked just like Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk from the Shoe comic strip. I can relate to Claire's struggles to write her first column and the many unwritten but generally accepted rules of newspaper writing. I suspect writing fiction is no different---the rules and examples are all readily available to the fine-tuned ear.
And yes, John, you got me with the last words of the epilogue---my throat tightened, my eyes misted.
-30-
Hough used actual historical events to help develop his characters and also explain from many different perspectives what it felt like to live through those turbulent times. Like a true journalist, he avoided overt editorializing and let the facts of the story stand on their own. I loved the various ways people avoided the draft, like the vulgar tattoo salute and the M&M trick. My grandfather was a newspaperman back in the day and I remember touring the Quad City Times as a boy. The racket and speed of the press was impressive. We had to wear earplugs. I remember with fond affection my days working on my high school newspaper. Our adviser looked just like Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk from the Shoe comic strip. I can relate to Claire's struggles to write her first column and the many unwritten but generally accepted rules of newspaper writing. I suspect writing fiction is no different---the rules and examples are all readily available to the fine-tuned ear.
And yes, John, you got me with the last words of the epilogue---my throat tightened, my eyes misted.
-30-
September 4, 2016
Not really a romance type, but this wasn't quite a romance although it did have an underlying love story. It was a sweet coming of age story, mixed with signs of times for "1968", with a little mystery. Easy read and overall not bad for just picking one off my own shelf I've had for sometime.
July 1, 2008
Boring. Another book of day to day life of an average person.
November 15, 2011
I am enjoying this story set in the late 1960's on Cape Cod. So far, the description of life at that time rings true. It looks like a relaxing book to read for leisure.
March 19, 2012
A fun read.
January 6, 2017
Really good book! It was a little hard for me to get into at first but the end was perfect
January 9, 2013
Worst Book
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews