Summerland

April 30, 2012
Nantucket Island’s year-round residents are shaken when a car crash claims the life of driver Penny Alistair, a vibrant and popular high school student, and leaves her twin brother, Hobby, in a coma. The other passengers, Penny’s boyfriend Jake and their friend Demeter, each have secrets, and everyone is touched by the tragedy, in fact, practically everyone on the island feels some responsibility for the accident. What did Demeter, who had been drinking, divulge to Penny on the beach that night? Was it Jake’s indiscretion after the cast party for the high school’s production of Grease, or Hobby’s just before prom? Was it the newspaper publisher’s affair, or Penny’s knowledge of his wife’s depression after the loss of her infant son? Each character’s guilt rubs them raw with worry. The sparks that this story throws out becomes a current that circles the agitated kids and their parents, electrifying the atmosphere as they grapple with what happened. Hilderbrand (Silver Girl) has a gift for building tension, and the reader will be willing to do just about anything to discover the real reason why Penny would drive herself, her brother, and her boyfriend over an embankment into oblivion. Agent: Michael Carlisle/David Forrer, Inkwell Management.

Narrator Erin Bennett is hindered by a plodding, lifeless story that tries the listener's patience. Her flat delivery is well suited to the stilted, short, declarative sentences. She conveys no emotion as she recounts the aftermath of a graduation-night accident that left one student dead, one in a coma, and two emotionally scarred. The story meanders between the students and their parents, never breathing life into the characters. Repetition of events through the voices of the various characters becomes tedious since there's no nuance to distinguish their unique perspectives. The simple writing style with its repetitive phrases may have been intended to build suspense, but you know the ÒsecretÓ long before it's disclosed, and you really don't care. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine