One Summer - David Baldacci

                        

When thirty-four year old war veteran Jack Armstrong is told he has only weeks to live, his first concern is for his beloved wife Lizzie, and their children: baby Jackie, twelve-year-old and would be actor Cory and rebellious teenage daughter, Mikki. It seems so cruel that an apparently fatal illness should claim him, a survivor of Afghanistan and Iraq, when he still has so much left to live for. 

On Christmas Eve, as Jack prepares to say goodbye to his family, unthinkable tragedy strikes again and Lizzie is killed in a car accident. Just when Jack thought living was far harder than dying, and the children's future looked so bleak, something remarkable happens which gives Jack the valuable second chance he'd only dreamed of.

Unexpectedly, the family inherits Lizzie's beautiful childhood home on the ocean front in South Carolina. During one unforgettable summer, Jack and the children struggle to re-build their lives. They learn to live again - and to love again. And they learn the biggest lesson of all  - the importance of family.

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David Baldaci's One Summer was another one of my charity bookshelf finds in Tesco's. 

By all accounts this is not the usual type of novel that David Baldaci is known for,

In One Summer you find a family struggling to come to terms with the loss of their wife and mother. Jack Armstrong had was a military man and for a large proportion of his marriage to Lizzie he had been away, leaving her to raise their three children.  Jack becomes ill and at the beginning of the novel it is he who is coming close to the end of his life when his wife is killed in a car accident. By some miracle Jack starts to regain his strength and finds he has a second chance with his children. 

Lizzie had grown up in a house by the ocean that she called The Palace. When Lizzie's grandmother dies she leaves the house to Jack and his family. Jack decides to take the children to The Palace for the summer just as his wife had planned before her death giving them the chance to come to terms with their loss.

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I had only read the first chapter when the Kleenex were required.  It was a gentle read and I was a little worried that it was going to loose it's way in the middle but then there is a twist at the end that you don't necessarily see coming and and you don't want to put it down because you need to know what is going to happen.

Moving onto my next read

I'm afraid this is a queue jumper. I saw this book in the supermarket and when I read just the front cover that was it I knew I had to have it and that it was going to have to be my next May read.
If I thought I needed the Kleenex before I certainly know I am going to need them now.


Happy reading one & all

Mx