Life Without Summer Author:Lynne Griffin Tessa Gray?s life changes forever when she loses her four-year-old daughter, Abby, in a hit-and-run accident outside her preschool. Once a vivacious, joyful mother and wife, Tessa now spends her days holed up in Abby?s room, sleeping in her bed, clutching Abby?s Tootsie Rabbit stuffed animal ? anything to keep her memories close. As Tessa grappl... more »es with a terrible grief, made worse by the police?s insistence that the case is unsolvable, she finds solace in Celia Reed, the therapist her husband has pushed her to see, and in the journal she?s keeping, where she compulsively counts the ?days without Abby? and maps out her plan for catching the driver who tore her family apart.
As Celia struggles to keep Tessa from getting caught up in a bleak crusade for answers, she finds that their sessions open the door to emotions that she?s spent years ignoring, forcing her to face the rising tensions in her life ? her troubled teenage son, her alcoholic ex-husband, and her fragile new marriage. Celia begins to realize that she must come to terms with the tragic mistakes of her past and the choices that have led her family to their own brink of destruction.
A haunting portrait of two women whose lives converge unexpectedly, Life Without Summer illuminates connections between love, marriage, truth, and forgiveness no listener will forget.« less
A very sad but touching story. Written as the journals of two women whose lives are intertwined by a sad event. Although not my usual type of book, it kept me enthralled the entire time and I did not want to put the book down.
Life Without Summer is heartbreaking yet has a deeply satisfying ending. As the author,Lynn Griffin, states in the essay following her story,"I've been known to let What Ifs get the better of me." I tend to do that myself . Expect tears if you plan to read this one.