Vanessa Lafaye. (2015). Under a Dark Summer Sky. Sourcebooks.

Vanessa Lafaye. 2015. Under a Dark Summer Sky. Sourcebooks.

Vanessa Lafaye, Under a Dark Summer Sky. Sourcebooks, 2015.

Vanessa Lafaye. Under a Dark Summer Sky. Sourcebooks, 2015.

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Under a Dark Summer Sky

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keywords

1. • value: Natural disasters
2. • value: family
3. • value: relationships
4. • value: dysfunctional family
5. • value: florida
6. • value: Great Depression
7. • value: PTSD
8. • value: character development
9. • value: hurricane
10. • value: best of
11. • value: mental health
12. • value: segregation
13. • value: Civil Rights
14. • value: world war
15. • value: world war one
16. • value: Historical Fiction
17. • value: missing person
18. • value: Race relations
19. • value: racial conflict
20. • value: 1930s
21. • value: southern
22. • value: World War I
23. • value: Missing People
24. • value: Returning Home
25. • value: 2017
26. • value: 20th_century_setting
27. • value: 2018
28. • value: flordia keys
29. • value: floriday
30. • value: vetrans

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Lafaye, Vanessa
   • bioText:

     Vanessa Lafaye is a Florida native, now living in the UK. She has worked for nearly 30 years in academic publishing, for Oxford University Press, Blackwell Publishing, and Wiley. She has published numerous articles in British broadsheets, and several short stories. She lives in Wiltshire. This is her first novel.

   • name: Vanessa Lafaye

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Sourcebooks Landmark

publishDate

2015-06-09T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Under a Dark Summer Sky

fullDescription

Under a Dark Summer Sky is a stunning debut novel, at once a love story set in a time of great turmoil and a vivid depiction a vicious hurricane.

Florida, 1935. In Heron Key, relationships are as tangled as the swamp's mangrove roots. It's been eighteen long years since Henry went away to war. Still, Missy has waited, cleaning the Kincaids' house and counting the stars. Now he's back, but she barely recognizes the desperate, destitute veteran he's become — unsure of his future, ashamed of his past. When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death after the Fourth of July barbecue, suspicion falls on him immediately. As tensions rise in the small community, the barometer starts to plummet — a massive hurricane is on its way.

Based on real historical events,Under a Dark Summer Sky evokes what happens when people, sweating under the weight of their pasts, are tested to the absolute limits of their endurance.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The Bookseller
   • content: "A storming debut novel [that] captures the racial and social tensions in southern America after the First World War. Part social history and part love story, this features the hurricane as a forceful, malevolent character in its own right, whipping through the pages."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Ellen Marie Wiseman, author of The Plum Tree and What She Left Behind
   • content: "Under a Dark Summer Sky is a tender love story, an unflinching look at racial tension, and a gripping account of what its like to survive a powerful hurricane on the Florida Keys in the 1930s. A haunting debut novel!"
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Daily Mail
   • content: "A taut and powerful novel....deeply moving. A riveting piece of social history, it's also a love story and a devastating account of what it's like to experience such a disaster."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of August
   • content: "In Vanessa Lafaye's extensively researched novel, set during the great depression, a hurricane exposes the horrific prejudice and hate that lie beneath the placid surface of an upscale town on the Florida keys. The historic 1935 storm hits a shabby camp housing WWI veterans, shattering their hopes of a better life. Henry, one of the vets, is a home-town boy who has returned with the slim hope of reclaiming his life as it was before the war; he is surprised and heartened to find the enduring love of Missy, a lovely young woman who has never forgotten him. A fast-paced page turner."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal
   • content: "Lafaye's debut novel succeeds on the merits of its well-drawn characters, its sense of place, and on the tragic events it details. The author keeps the reader at a distance from the characters, but this serves a greater purpose: a focus on the big picture of a town struggling under the weight of the past. Readers of historical fiction will find this book rewarding."
6. • premium: False
   • source: GOOD HOUSEKEEPING UK
   • content: "Part love-story, part eye-opening insight into a tumultuous time in American history - the years after the First World War, when veterans tried to rebuild their lives and racial tensions ran high."
7. • premium: False
   • source: TRIP FICTION
   • content: "This is Vanessa Lafaye's debut novel, and what a writer she is! She has a talent with words that enables her prose to glide across the page, there are no superfluous words, and each paragraph eases the story along. She is a natural creator of atmosphere and suspense, and with a deft hand she creates credible, yet humanly flawed characters. She also creates a very palpable setting, the heat, the oppressive temperatures and the gurgling, sulphurous swampland all assault the reader's senses.(5 STARS) "
8. • premium: False
   • source: RT Book Reviews, 4 1/2 Stars
   • content: "Lafaye brilliantly depicts one of the worst disasters in Florida's history, as well as a turbulent era of segregation and hostility. Her prose makes it feel as if you were in the eye of the storm. Lafaye is a powerful writer and a talent to watch."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal
   • content: "Lafaye's debut novel succeeds on the merits of its well-drawn characters, its sense of place, and on the tragic events it details. "
10. • premium: False
    • source: Publishers Weekly
    • content: "In her standout debut, Lafaye takes a historical event...and weaves it into a richly imagined tale that also makes a bold statement on race relations in the 30's."
11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 20, 2015
      In her standout debut, Lafaye takes a historical event—the devastating hurricane that hit Islamorada, Fla., on Labor Day in 1935—and weaves it into a richly imagined tale that also makes a bold statement on race relations in the ’30s. Missy, a black nanny for a wealthy white couple’s son, is waiting for the man she loves to return to the fictional town Heron Key. The man, Henry, is a broken and despairing veteran of World War I who has never gotten over the horrors he saw overseas; now, during the Depression, he’s trying to eke out a living in President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration program under a sadistic supervisor’s eye. After a white woman is brutally attacked following a segregated beach barbecue, all eyes turn in accusation to Henry, who is black. As the small town’s uproar grows, few realize that the devastating hurricane headed their way will test their ability to survive. Lafaye’s blistering commentary on race, as well as her vivid descriptions, will stay with the reader.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 15, 2015
      It's 1935. As a monstrous hurricane bears down on the Florida Keys, black and white residents and a group of World War I veterans building a bridge must face not only the truth of nature's cruelty, but also of man's. In Lafaye's debut novel, she explores Depression-era Florida, following the relationships among Missy, a self-educated African-American nanny; Nelson and Hilda Kincaid, the richest, and most unhappy, white couple in town; Henry, a veteran who has just returned home to work after 18 years away; Dwayne, the town sheriff; and Selma, Henry's sister [10], who has the power to invoke supernatural forces. During the annual town barbecue, tension between black and white residents boils over, and Hilda is beaten nearly to death. Soon the hurricane comes to wipe the slate clean. Lafaye's novel is based on true circumstances, a fact she drives home in an opening historical note. This matters less than she thinks, because the novel is rooted in human relationships, with the hurricane serving more as symbol than climax to the plot. The characters are flawed and interesting, and the descriptions of place and culture are colorful. But somehow the novel fails to achieve any great depth or pathos until the very end, when Lafaye enumerates the lives lost during the storm. This is only a problem because it seems that Lafaye wants this to be more, a story of our nation's racism and the scars it left behind. But the true focus is on individuals and their struggles; the book fails to transcend and become universal commentary. Character-driven drama that, while it doesn't offer any new insights into our country's racist past, explores a unique setting.

      COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 15, 2015
      

      It's 1935, and the town of Heron Key, FL, simmers in ill-fated relationships and prejudice. Missy has been working for the Kincaids and living with her Mama for as long as she can remember. When Henry, who left to fight in the war 17 years earlier, finally returns home, Missy begins to hope for something more in life. But, on the night of the annual Fourth of July barbecue, a white woman is found beaten nearly to death. Henry is suspected of the crime. And the town, preoccupied with its troubles, sits at the cusp of the most forceful hurricane America has ever seen. Before the storm is over, it takes casualties at random, but it also pushes the people in Heron Key to reveal their true selves, both the evil and the heroic. VERDICT Lafaye's debut novel succeeds on the merits of its well-drawn characters, its sense of place, and on the tragic events it details. The author keeps the reader at a distance from the characters, but this serves a greater purpose: a focus on the big picture of a town struggling under the weight of the past. Readers of historical fiction will find this book rewarding.--Shannon Greene, Greenville Technical Coll. Lib., SC

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

165

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1. • value: Fiction
2. • value: African American Fiction
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4. • value: Historical Fiction

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shortDescription

Under a Dark Summer Sky is a stunning debut novel, at once a love story set in a time of great turmoil and a vivid depiction a vicious hurricane.

Florida, 1935. In Heron Key, relationships are as tangled as the swamp's mangrove roots. It's been eighteen long years since Henry went away to war. Still, Missy has waited, cleaning the Kincaids' house and counting the stars. Now he's back, but she barely recognizes the desperate, destitute veteran he's become — unsure of his future, ashamed of his past. When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death after the Fourth of July barbecue, suspicion falls on him immediately. As tensions rise in the small community, the barometer starts to plummet — a massive hurricane is on its way.

Based on real historical events,Under a Dark Summer Sky evokes what happens when people, sweating under the weight of their pasts, are tested to the absolute limits of their endurance.

sortTitle

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   • description: Fiction / Literary
2. • code: FIC045000
   • description: Fiction / Family Life / General
3. • code: FIC049040
   • description: Fiction / African American & Black / Historical