At Atria, my editor, Lindsay Sagnette, loved these characters, the setting, and the story from the very first draft. Her encouragement and support and her enthusiastic love for the Levy/Weinberg/Danhauser family meant the world to me. Thanks to her assistants, Fiora Elbers-Tibbitts and Jade Hui.
I’m lucky to work with a brilliant, supportive publisher like Libby McGuire, and with Jonathan Karp, who has always been a great champion of my work. Thanks also to Libby’s assistant, Kitt Reckord-Mabicka, who helps make all the magic happen.
Dana Trocker and Karlyn Hixson are marketing geniuses, and I’m eternally grateful for their smarts and savvy. On the audio front, Tom Spain, Sarah Lieberman, Chris Lynch, and Elisa Shokoff are thoughtful and proactive about finding just the right people to lend their voices to my words. James Iacobelli and Olga Grlic are responsible for my beautiful covers. They outdid themselves with The Summer Place, and I’m grateful that they always make my books look so lovely, and that the women on the covers actually resemble the women on the page. Ariele Fredman is the absolute hands-down most outstanding publicist/cheerleader that any writer could hope to have in her corner. Thanks also to Katelyn Phillips, Lisa Sciambra, Zoe Harris, Chris Lynch, Nicole Bond, Paige Lytle, Iris Chen, Shelby Pumphrey, Vanessa Silverio, Esther Paradelo, Dana Sloan, and Suzanne Donahue. Finally, thanks to Kathleen Rizzo and Lisa Silverman for their careful, attentive reading and for endlessly saving me from myself. Veronica Vega of Salt & Sage was a thoughtful reader. Any mistakes are mine.
Andrea Cipriani Mecchi is a friend and a genius photographer who makes getting your picture taken feel like a party instead of a root canal. I’m grateful to her for making me look good, and for always making it fun.
Jasmine Barta keeps my website looking sharp and my newsletter running smoothly （and if you haven’t seen my website or signed up for my newsletter, you can go to www.jenniferweiner.com and fix that right now!）。
On the home front, I am eternally grateful to my assistant, Meghan Burnett, whose steadfast good cheer and editorial acumen make my writing life possible, and who kept things on track during a challenging year. Thanks to my daughters, Lucy and Phoebe, for letting their mom sojourn in the neighborhood of make-believe.
This book would not have been possible without the love, generosity, and strategic nonchalance of my husband and first reader, Bill Syken, who is unfailingly kind and supportive and who let me borrow his life-changing orthopedic flip-flops for my novel and didn’t complain （much）。 There’s no one with whom I’d rather quarantine.
And finally, thanks to my dear Moochie, muse and companion, the best dog any writer ever had. We adopted Moochie in 2012 and, for most of her life, she was rarely more than six feet away from my side. When I was writing, she’d be curled up on her dog bed beside me. When I went out in a kayak or on a paddleboard, she’d be with me. When I left the house, she’d sit, watchful and waiting, until I came back.
Moochie’s heart started failing in the summer of 2020. The vets at the University of Pennsylvania and Queen Village Animal Hospital took great care of her. She hung on and stayed with me until two days after my mother’s memorial service on the Cape, when she went out with me on the paddleboard to scatter my mom’s ashes in the bay.
Moochie, I hope that wherever you are, you can catch every cat you chase, that you get to eat every chicken wing you find, and that nobody complains when you wake them up in the middle of the night and pretend you have to go out just so you can nudge them out of the warm spot in the bed. I was so lucky to be your person.
The Summer Place
Jennifer Weiner
This reading group guide for THE SUMMER PLACE includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Jennifer Weiner. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
From “the undisputed boss of the beach read” （The New York Times）， The Summer Place is a testament to family in all its messy glory; it is a story about what we sacrifice and how we forgive. Enthralling, witty, bighearted, and sharply observed, this is Jennifer Weiner’s love letter to the Outer Cape and the power of home, the way our lives are enriched by the people we call family, and the endless ways love can surprise us.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
The novel includes very different mother-daughter relationships: Veronica and Sarah, Sarah and Ruby, Annette and Ruby. How are their relationships similar and how are they different? What do you think of Annette’s rejection of motherhood? How did it affect Sarah to become a stepmother to Ruby at such a young age? Why do you think Veronica has such a different relationship with Sarah, her daughter, compared to Sam, her son? Are there “right” and “wrong” ways to be a mother?