Steve chats with Kerri Maher, author of Summer of Love, about why this novel is her most personal, intergenerational trauma, researching California’s wine history, her writing process, and her friendship / collaboration with her audiobook narrator. Then NoveList librarians Monica and Dawn suggest readalikes for Summer of Love from The Circ Desk!

Read the transcript!

It’s the summer of 1967 and the counterculture revolution is in full swing in San Francisco. Every street is alive with the music of Jim Morrison and Dionne Warwick, and in view of the Golden Gate bridge young people come together, waving anti-war signs and shouting for equal rights. No one is more into the messages of love and peace than Winnie Hartley who has just graduated from UC Berkeley determined to use poetry to capture the ever-shifting world around her. When she reconnects with her high school boyfriend, an aspiring musician, their creative bond further fuels her work, and it feels like her life is finally taking off.

Meanwhile, miles up the winding coast, her sister Miranda stays close to home, throwing herself into running the family business, Hartley Vineyard. She’s determined to make California wine that rivals French. But change is in the air this wild and heady summer, and each sister will make choices that set their lives hurdling down paths neither would have imagined.

Fifty years later, Dawn Hartley stays as far as possible from her family’s famous vineyard, until a work assignment requires her to research the bestselling Vineland novels penned by a famously anonymous author. Determined to discover the identity of this mysterious writer—who seems to know things no one should about her family—Dawn embarks on a soul-searching journey along the windswept coast of California to uncover her family’s secrets even as she’s keeping a big one of her own.

SHOW NOTES:

Summer of Love by Kerri Maher
Circulating Ideas 249: All You Have to Do Is Call by Kerri Maher (2023)

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THE CIRC DESK RECOMMENDS:

Where the Girls Were by Kate Schatz
Definitely Better Now by Ava Robinson
California Golden by Melanie Benjamin
Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LeCour