Book summary

In the summer of 1899, 15-year-old Olympia Biddeford visits the New Hampshire coast with her wealthy Boston family. Spirited and bright, she soon befriends her father's colleague, Dr. John Haskell, a talented writer, respected physician, and enthusiastic philanthropist. Olympia's summer of awakenings--both intellectual and sexual--turns bleak when her love affair with the good doctor, who is a married father of four and 26 years Olympia's senior, is uncovered.

Media reviews

"[P]leasantly atmospheric....Olympia leaps out in sharp focus from the first page, but the conscientiously tangled plodding and the muddle it provokes in her show the strain of transplanting a millennial sensibility back a hundred years."