Donna Galanti’s books have inadvertently been on vacation with us twice now. The first was an emerging reading chapter book about unicorns. As a point of reference, I read Unicorn Island and found it to be mixed in with enough action and mystery to latch in kids, but mainly girls, aged eight and up. Loon Cove Summer snuck in our beach bag this year and mainly hammers that audience, but with one big difference.
Unlike the horned horse book from a couple of summers ago, Lone Cove Summer is a chapter book. It’s impossible for readers to mistake Lone Cove Summer for anything other than mglit. This is a thick book, relative to how upper-elementary ages through middle school will view it, and wears its heart firmly on its sleeve. It’s the stuff of 13 year-old girl’s magic that will demo up through 16-year-old girls. The book will do so as long as those audiences are open to a novel that deals with more of life’s struggles than it does the triumphs.
Sarah is a somewhat typical 13 YO girl with many of the same concerns and worries of her peers. She’s spending the summer at the lake campgrounds that her father manages, has her heart set on a first kiss from a boy this summer and loves animals. Unfortunately, her mother passed away six months ago, and the grief is a daily struggle. To make this summer even more challenging, her best friend is going away for a couple of weeks, leaving her without a wingman and confidante.
The campground is in an idyllic part of northern Maine that butts up to the end, or the starting point, of the Appalachian Trail. It’s an outdoorsy paradise with lakes around every bend and mountain peaks along the horizon. It’s also an area that’s prone to a wide variety of birds and a nearby bird sanctuary that Sarah volunteers for.
The day after her best friend goes away for the summer, she notices a cute boy staying at the campsite. They start to talk and it turns out that the two have a lot in common. Sarah also hears from an adult that she’s been communicating with, who is an expert in dealing with loons, an aquatic bird who’s been disappearing from the lakes lately. This adult is in the area and is renting a cabin at the campsite that her father is managing. Sarah’s grandfather, JuJu, manages the convenience store that’s on the property, which gives her ample opportunities to meet many of the visitors.
It also turns out that the cute boy is the nephew of the bird expert. Sarah’s dad is also getting friendly with the bird expert, but is it all happening too soon after her mother’s death? Her powder keg of emotions is further stirred when she discovers her mother’s diary. The diary was written when she was hiking the Appalachian Trail and almost completed it. In the diary, she expresses doubts about being a parent and uncertainties about her life’s direction.
There is a lot to unpack in Loon Cove Summer. As I was reading I thought that it was too much and that certain threads should’ve been held back. However, as the climax plays out it all makes sense and ties together the various conflicts nicely. If one of the threads hadn’t been pulled,d then her father’s actions in that period wouldn’t have felt so human. The book is realistic fiction mglit that acknowledges and predominantly lives in life’s downturns. There are moments of relief and happiness, but they happen much less frequently than we’d like them to in real life.
However, the fact that life throws you curveballs is in fact, real life. It’s not realistic to think that nothing bad will happen, nobody in your sphere will ever die or that a lack of money will present tough choices or unwanted outcomes. This is the world that Loon Cove Summer lives in. A teenage girl is navigating things that she wishes she didn’t have to, but life goes on. It’s a situation that teens may not identify with 100%, but there are aspects of her valleys that will resonate with most teens. My parent has started to date after the death (or divorce) of their partner. There’s an experience that hasn’t been completed that I really wanted to do.
The perceived ‘piling on’ of the drama in Loon Cove Summer that I felt, won’t be felt to teens. They’ll simply breeze over it as they concentrate on the story thread that resonates more closely with them. In that respect, it’s similar to Unicorn Island, the chapter book that I was reading on the beach a couple of years ago. They’re both well-written books whose subject matter is vastly different, but it manages to hold reader’s attention once they get mildly invested in the characters. Loon Cove Summer won’t be a go-to read for guys in middle school for the most part. However, once kids loosen up just a little bit and accept that this book is a little more ‘real’ than the fantasy stuff they read they’ll be effortlessly surprised.
Loon Cove Summer is by Donna Galanti and is available on Wild Trail Press.
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