The Goodbye Summer-Patricia Gaffney

The Goodbye Summer
Patricia Gaffney
Avon, Aug 2009, $12.99
ISBN: 9780060836870

In Maryland, thirty-three years old music teacher Caddie Winger knows this is the worst summer of her life. Her close friends at Wake House; a convalescent home for the elderly and those recuperating from crippling accidents including her Nana who broke her leg; have been dying; although rationally she knows they are either septuagenarians or octogenarians. Caddie mourns their passing as she has made friends with many of them since she spends much of her free time at Wake House.

It is people like elderly resident Thea who persuades Caddie who smoke joints with her while others encourage her to live life to the fullest even as the younger woman worries her beloved Nana seems to get stranger with each passing moment. Struggling with no money and no confidence, Caddie is attracted to thirtyish resident Henry Magill, who is recovering from a sky-diving accident that left his fiancée dead.

This is a captivating perhaps overly teary tale of a woman who has not taken any life FLIGHT LESSONS until the senior citizens and Henry persuade Ms. Sorrowful Winger (great surname for a grounded sad eyes) to imitate Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. The storyline is aptly titled yet ironically readers know for the thirty-three years old piano teacher this is the most wonderful summer of her maudlin life.

Harriet Klausner