The Summer Guest

A literary novel by PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author Justin Cronin, widely praised for its emotional insight, narrative power, and lyrical prose, telling a multi-generational family story centered on a dying man’s final visit to a remote Maine fishing camp.

The Summer Guest unfolds primarily at a rustic fishing camp on the northern tip of Maine, a place that has offered solace to generations of visitors. On an evening in late summer, wealthy financier Harry Wainwright, nearing the end of his life, arrives at the camp with a wish to spend one last day fishing in the waters he has loved for thirty years and with a bequest that will change the lives of those around him. From this simple premise, Justin Cronin weaves the intertwined stories of Harry and four people connected to the camp: Jordan Patterson, the haunted young guide who will take him out on the lake; Joe Crosby, the camp’s owner and a Vietnam draft evader still wrestling with what it means to be brave; Joe’s wife, Lucy, the woman Harry has loved for decades; and their daughter Kate, whose memories and choices unlock long-buried truths.

Moving between wartime Italy, the upheavals of the Vietnam era, and the private battles of love and family, the novel explores themes of love, loyalty, forgiveness, mortality, and the enduring pull of home. With quiet moments and powerful revelations, The Summer Guest portrays how the bonds of family and the “lines of love” connecting people across time can shape and redeem their lives.

“The Summer Guest is a jewel… more than entertainment—it’s a work of art.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Justin Cronin succeeds, touchingly and tenderly, in portraying life itself as a triumph of hope over experience.” — The Boston Globe

“Here is a gifted and assured writer… a haunting story about the way time changes us and about what endures.” — Houston Chronicle