An Afternoon in Summer: My Year on a South Sea Island, Doing Nothing, Gaining Everything, and Finally Falling in Love

In an attempt to escape from her stressful life as a single working mother of two young boys, Kathy Giuffre books a year-long trip for four in a tropical paradise. At the last minute, her boyfriend announces he isn't joining them, and Kathy finds herself in an unlivable house in Rarotonga, a tiny speck in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. Her unlikely savior is Emily, an 82-year-old Maori woman with a large white house on the edge of the ocean, which the two women share with two callous missionaries, the ghosts of Emily’s ancestors, and, briefly, a bizarre couple from Eastern Europe. As time passes, Kathy is seduced by the island and its people and by feelings she has never before experienced. This is an inspirational story about having the courage to search for something better and finding it—serenity, sensuality, and, ultimately, love.