Firefly Summer » (Unabridged)

As an author, Binchy's goal is simple: to let the story shine through. She told Oprah Winfrey, "I do not have a particular literary style, I am not experimental ... I tell a story and I want to share it with my readers." As a result, with her Ireland-set stories featuring strong heroines, friendship and romance, Binchy has gained quite a following since she became a bestselling author at age 43.

In Mountfern, life meanders as slowly as the river running through it. The pace has hardly changed since the great house burned down in the Troubles and its shell became an ivy-clad playground for the local children. But when Patrick O'Neil arrives from the States with grand plans to turn the ruins of Fernscourt into Ireland's finest hotel, ripples begin to appear on the surface calm of this backwater. Brimming with speculation about the wealthy, charming American, the little community wonders how he will affect their lives.

Publishers Weekly

Binchy's latest novel (after Light a Penny Candle) is set in the tiny Irish backwater of Mountfern, home to a handful of families and typical of hundreds of similar hamlets in the British Isles where life is lived to the rhythm of the seasons. Mountfern is the ancestral home of Patrick O'Neill, a rough, rich American whose wealth comes from bars and restaurants, and whose dream is to build a grand hotel in Mountfern. The consequences of Patrick's arrival there early in the '60s are often hilarious: the local aristocracyespecially the widows and spinstersvies for his attentions, while the villagers are beguiled by his largesse and by thoughts of the prosperity the hotel will bring. But tragedy strikes when a bulldozer working on the hotel site crushes Kate Ryan's spine; her adaptation to life in a wheelchair is brave and touching. Kate (Binchy's most splendid character) and her husband own a pub that is bound to suffer when the hotel opens. Other charactersall memorably portrayedcome to be resentful of the "Yank's'' money while they reveal their own cupidity. Patrick's joy at his homecoming is slowly eroded, and his teenage son Kerry breaks hearts, including his father's. Binchy's lyrical prose has a lilt and musicality that makes it a joy to read. With a strong narrative drive that never flags, the story engages all the reader's emotions. (September)