{"product_id":"the-summer-friend-a-memoir-9780593466483","title":"The Summer Friend: A Memoir","description":"\u003cb\u003eAlive with the intoxicating magic of summer in New England, former editor of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e Charles McGrath's evocative memoir looks back at that sun-soaked season, at family, youth, and a singular bond made at a time when he thought he was beyond making friends. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"To read Chip McGrath's gentle, elegant memoir ... is to lose yourself in your own past summers, especially the ones of your youth, when you imagined there'd be an infinite number of them, and also friends to share those summers with. That both turn out to be numbered makes this book positively ache with beauty and loss.\" --Richard Russo \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIt was early evening and a new acquaintance had come to retrieve his daughter from a play date. Instead of driving up in a minivan, he arrived by water, tacking his sailboat smartly across a squiggly channel in the marsh, throwing a rope overboard, and zipping back home, his gleeful daughter riding in the wake. Who knew you could do such a thing? And how could you resist befriending a man such as that? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOver the course of this rich memoir, McGrath recalls with a gimlet eye the pleasures of summers past: amateur lobstering, 9-hole golf, family costume charades, bridge-jumping, and a friendship forged between two men from different backgrounds who came together late in life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRecounting the vagaries of summer with such precision and warmth-- peeling long strips of sunburnt skin from your shoulder as if \"shuffling off your own cocoon,\" the outdoor shower curtain blowing open in the breeze, an M80 firework in the mailbox--\u003ci\u003eThe Summer Friend\u003c\/i\u003e is simultaneously a potent evocation of the rhythms and rituals of summer and a stirring remembrance of a friend found and then lost.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Vintage\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/13\/2023\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780593466483\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 240","brand":"Charles McGrath","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42875161673909,"sku":"9780593466483","price":15.3,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_01316cc8-de8e-4c48-b7d2-a9c4be7e6108.jpg?v=1684813624","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-summer-friend-a-memoir-9780593466483","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}