My mother died in May. Then, in August, I dropped my daughter off at college in New York City. That was another nontragic loss, because kids grow up and move out. You give them roots, and you give them wings, as the saying goes, and then you watch them leave you.
Those two losses made me realize that the torch had been passed, and that I was now the matriarch of my family. It made me think about mothers and daughters and the passage of time. As my own first reader, I wanted to write a fun, diverting, juicy book that would keep me entertained and give me some respite from my real life, but I knew it was also going to end up being a story about mothers and daughters and grandmothers and granddaughters; about growing up and letting go of the places and the people we love.
Your characters wear masks and discuss other safety measures, such as quarantine and COVID testing. What was it like to write a book that portrays the pandemic as you were living through it?
If you’re writing a book set in the here and now, the COVID of it all presents a challenge. You either have to create an alternate version of history where everything’s the same but COVID isn’t present, or you have to somehow engage with a pandemic that’s been tragic and disruptive while also feeling endless and tedious. I didn’t want to write a book that was all about COVID, but I was also really interested in what COVID was doing to romantic relationships, to existing marriages, to families . . . to pretty much everything. I’d read a lot about people who’d just started dating and moved in together when the first quarantines began, and I absolutely wanted to explore what hitting the fast-forward button like that could do to a new relationship. Similarly, I think that COVID lay bare the ways that women were bearing the burden of a household’s emotional labor, all of the invisible things that help a family function. I knew what it was like for me when my house suddenly turned into my husband’s office, my kids’ school, a 24-hour diner/laundry/therapist’s office, and I wanted to write about that, too.
You have a sentient house in this book. How did you get into the “mind” of a family home?
Honestly, I think getting into the mind of a house was easier than getting into the minds of some of the male characters I’ve written!
Architects and interior designers talk about houses with bones and a house’s character; houses where you walk inside and immediately have a sense of the people who live there. Between bones and character, you’re already halfway to a person! I’ve also always been struck by the idea that, on a molecular level, houses contain the echoes of every conversation held inside of them, the scents of every meal prepared. It didn’t seem to be too far of a leap to imagine a house that not only holds all that history but also has feelings about it. I imagined the house as a protector, the keeper of the family’s memories, an entity that knows them intimately and wants what’s best for them. Once I had that identity established, writing the specifics wasn’t that hard.
In this book, you explore parenting from many angles. There are stepparents, single parents, and even a rejection of the experience entirely. What do you want readers to take away from the book about the expectations of parenting?
I’ve always been interested in the idea of found families, or how you can make your own family, and it’s not necessarily going to include all （or any of） the people who are biologically related to you. I also wanted to celebrate stepparents and the difficult role they have to play. The fairy tales and Disney films might cast them as the villains, but I think that stepparents can have a really lovely, supportive role in a child’s life. Like Sarah says, a stepmother or stepfather can be a bonus adult in a kid’s life, another person who can provide stability and support. Or, in more dire cases （poor Connor!）， a stepparent can be all the stability and support a kid has. I wanted to write a realistic story, not a fairy tale where a stepdaughter instantly and permanently loves her stepmother, or a stepson doesn’t have to work through feelings of abandonment and sorrow, but where the relationship takes time and effort on both sides. Most of all, I wanted to show the importance of kids getting love and support and stability from the adults who are around and available to give it to them. I want readers to come away knowing that they have the power to be that stable, loving person in a child’s life, even if they don’t have the official title of Mom or Dad.
We are truly transported to Cape Cod in the book. What do you find so inspiring about that setting?
The Outer Cape has always been one of my favorite places. It’s the place I went on summer vacations with my family when I was a child, the place where I took my own kids. It was also one of my mother’s favorite places. She loved to swim, in the ocean and the bay and the freshwater kettle ponds. She loved to ride her bike, and to walk around Provincetown, which is one of the most vibrant, colorful, eclectic towns in the world. I have so many wonderful memories of the time I’ve spent there . . . and, in the midst of the pandemic, there were so many moments when I wished I was there: that it was summer, and I could feel the sand under my feet and smell the salt water and hear the wind rustling the reeds. I think so many of us needed （or still need） an escape from the world, and if The Summer Place gives readers a little bit of that escape and a sense of what it feels like to be in this beautiful, wild, unspoiled place, that makes me very happy as an author.