David Macfarlane’s Summer Gone introduces a writer of incandescent literary skill and beautifully evokes the sometimes painful relationship between father and son.

When Bay Newby is twelve he is sent north for the first time, and he falls in love with the life of ritual, beauty, and stark privilege of summer camp. Then the death of his baby sister calls him home, and it will be twenty-three years before his next “perfect summer.” The summer he spends with his young son will contain loss also, but also discovery and redemption. Summer Gone is a novel of layered experience, of life, death and love as seen through the eyes of a young boy as he grows into a wiser–and more haunted–man. “Remarkable.... The novel’s language...evokes the freshwater lakes and rivers that the characters navigate.”
--The New York Times Book Review

“A remarkable achievement full of wit, intelligence, and humane charm.”
--Toronto Star

“Spellbinding.... Macfarlane’s luminous prose is itself like summer: it shimmers.”
--Publishers Weekly