A Summer Without Boys

It was the summer of 1944 and Ruth Hailey was fifteen, trapped with her mother on a bus heading for a Catskill Mountain resort that promised nothing but boredom and desperation. A summer without boys. She could already imagine the inevitable assignment in school next fall: “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” A blank page.

Two months later she could have written a book. About her absent father. About her mother and all the other manless women at the old hotel. About Abe, the proprietor’s handsome son. And about sixteen-year-old Lenore, who had already packed a lifetime into a few gum-cracking years. Nothing in the world could have prepared Ruth for Lenore. Or Abe. And nothing but fate could have cast them together in a summer of love, loss and rebellion that changed Ruth’s life forever.