Nina MacLaughlin 
Summer Solstice 
An Essay

"A vivid contrast to this moment of masks: the immediacy of a season bursting out of itself, elemental and clean" from the acclaimed author of Wake, Siren (Portland Press Herald).Summer is fireflies and sparklers. Fat red tomatoes sliced thin and salted. Lemonade and long dreamy days. The treasures of the season are gone much too soon-but they’re captured here, in loving sensuous prose that’s both personal and universal, for you to find any time of year.Experience the most evocative tribute to the meaning of the season, a season whose magical feeling stays with us even in winter. Where does that feeling come from? What is summer made of? The smell of cut grass behind the gasoline of a lawnmower. A crown you’ve made of flowers. Blackberry bush prickers. First hot dog off the grill. Stargazing and sleeping with the windows open. This essay brims with a searching honesty and insight about what this season has meant in our pasts and what it might mean in our lives ahead.Release yourself into the sky and feel, Nina Mac Laughlin writes, for a moment: there’s time.If summer is the season of your life, if the months between Memorial Day and Labor Day hold your favorite memories, you’ll love Summer Solstice."For those who cannot safely venture from their homes this season, Mac Laughlin’s book can be that breath of fresh air, the nostalgic call back to better days, and the hope for a future when we can safely gather again under open sky . . . [Summer Solstice is] a brief reverie, short and sweet like the fleeting days it describes." -Green Mountain Review