The High Season: A Novel - Softcover

Advance praise for The High Season

"Judy Blundell wields words like an oyster knife in this shimmering story of art, money, and celebrity. This is wicked summer fun."--Helen Simonson, New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Before the War

"The High Season is touching, funny, and emotionally precise, recognizable yet full of surprises. Change comes to Orient Point and the lives of the people who live there like a hurricane. Then a hurricane comes, too! Forget the Hamptons. Blundell's North Shores is where the real drama--and fun--blows in."--Cathleen Schine, New York Times bestselling author of The Three Weissmanns of Westport

"The High Season is an au courant page-turner about a family on Long Island's North Fork who rent out their oceanfront home to the wealthy, as they struggle to hold on to it for future generations. The beating heart of this story is Ruthie, middle-aged and at a crossroads, wondering if her every decision, personal and professional, has been a mistake. You will revel in the human drama and comedy of this skillfully told tale. Wise, funny and insightful, Judy Blundell tells the story of one woman that says something about all of us, our aspirations, and the delicate state of the American dream."--Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of Kiss Carlo

"Judy Blundell's The High Season is a smart, poignant, witty novel about a family's life-changing summer on Long Island's North Fork. It has a churning plot redolent of those great women's movies from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and a winning cast of complicated characters, variously brimming with spirit, brains, humor, cowardice, duplicity, evil, charm, and generosity."--Susan Rieger, author of The Heirs

"I tore through this book with the sort of obsessive speed that makes you forget about things like eating, and sleeping. On top of tackling tough issues like wealth, family, and class, Judy Blundell treats her characters--be they mothers or daughters, socialites or artists--with more honesty and heart than any writer I know. This isn't a book that you'll leave on some beach on Long Island's North Fork--this is a book you'll be talking about for a long time to come."--Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding

"The High Season by Judy Blundell is a wickedly good read, hilarious, poignant, and insightful, with a breathtaking finale. If you've ever served on a committee, or lived in a resort town, or had friends or parents or children or an infuriating spouse, you will love this book. I did!" --Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of A Nantucket Wedding

On Memorial Day weekend in a seaside town on Long Island, Ruthie, her still-adored ex-husband, Mike, and the couple's sullen fifteen-year-old daughter, Jem, are packing up the last bits of their household in preparation for the yearly arrival of a wealthy renter from Manhattan. It is what Jem calls "the summer bummer"; her parents own a beautiful house that they have renovated by hand from top to bottom, but which they can only afford to keep by leasing it out during the best part of the year. Soon Ruthie's relationship with Mike seems about to disappear for good. The job she loves, as the underpaid and undervalued director of the local arts museum, is under siege from a coterie of rich women from the city, who want to use it as an opportunity for social climbing. An old flame who once broke her heart and betrayed her is back on the scene, causing Ruthie to re-evaluate their romance. And in the midst of it all, her teenage daughter Jem could be involved in a dangerous and destructive relationship of her own. This is a novel about the dreams and ambitions of youth coming to terms with the realities of middle-age; about the way desperation can make us astonish ourselves; and about how the most disruptive events in our lives can sometimes twist endings into new beginnings.