A Hundred Summers: The ultimate romantic escapist beach read
The New York Times bestselling novel.Rhode Island, 1938. A sweltering summer of secrets, passion and betrayal…‘I wish I could remember more. I wish I had taken down every detail, because I didn’t see him again until the summer of 1938; the summer the hurricane came and washed the world away…’Lily Dane has returned to the exclusive enclave of Seaview, Rhode Island, hoping for an escape from the city and from her heartbreak. What she gets instead is the pain of facing newlyweds Budgie and Nick Greenwald – her former best friend and former fiancé.During lazy days and gin-soaked nights, Lily is drawn back under Budgie’s glamorous and enticing influence, and the truth behind Budgie and Nick’s betrayal of Lily begins to emerge. And as the spectre of war in Europe looms, a storm threatens to destroy everything…
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Beatriz Williams
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
First published by Penguin Group USA 2013
First published in the UK by Harper 2015
Copyright © Beatriz Williams
Cover layout design © HarperCollinPublishers Ltd 2015
Design concept by Sara Woods
Cover photograph © H. Armstrong Roberts/Getty Images
Beatriz Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008134921
Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780008134914
Version: 2017-07-24
To the victims and survivors of the
great New England hurricane of 1938
And, as always,
to my husband and children
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
“Dover Beach” (1867)
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
1. Route 5, Ten Miles South of Hanover, New Hampshire: October 1931
2. Seaview, Rhode Island: May 1938
3. Hanover, New Hampshire: October 1931
4. Seaview, Rhode Island: May 1938
5. Smith College, Massachusetts: October 1931
6. Seaview, Rhode Island: May 1938
7. Smith College, Massachusetts: Mid-December 1931
8. Seaview, Rhode Island: July 4, 1938
9. 725 Park Avenue, New York City: December 1931
10. Seaview, Rhode Island: July 1938
11. 725 Park Avenue, New York City: New Year’s Eve 1931
12. Seaview, Rhode Island: August 1938
13. Manhattan: New Year’s Eve 1931
14. Seaview, Rhode Island: Labor Day 1938
15. Route 9, New York State: New Year’s Day 1932
16. Manhattan: Tuesday, September 20, 1938
17. Lake George, New York: January 2, 1932
18. Manhattan: Tuesday, September 20, 1938
19. Lake George, New York: January 1932
20. Manhattan: Wednesday, September 21, 1938
21. 1932–1938
22. Seaview, Rhode Island: Wednesday, September 21, 1938
23. Seaview, Rhode Island: Wednesday afternoon, September 21, 1938
Epilogue: Seaview Rhode Island - June 1944
Historical Note
Keep Reading The House on Cocoa Beach
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide: A Hundred Summers
About the Author
Also by Beatriz Williams
About the Publisher
One hundred and twelve miles of curving pavement lie between the entrance gates of Smith College and the Dartmouth football stadium, and Budgie drives them as she does everything else: hell-for-leather.
The leaves shimmer gold and orange and crimson against a brilliant blue sky, and the sun burns unobstructed overhead, teasing us with a false sense of warmth. Budgie has decreed we drive with the top down, though I am shivering in the draft, huddled inside my wool cardigan, clutching my hat.
She laughs at me. “You should take your hat off, honey. You remind me of my mother holding on to her hat like that. Like it’s the end of civilization if someone sees your hair.” She has to shout the words, with the wind gusting around her.
“It’s not that!” I shout back. It’s because my hair, released from the enveloping dark wool-felt cloche, will expand into a Western tumbleweed, while Budgie’s sleek little curls only whip about artfully before settling back in their proper places at journey’s end. Even her hair conforms to Budgie’s will. But this explanation is far too complicated for the thundering draft to tolerate, so I swallow it all back, pluck the pins out of my hat, and toss it on the seat beside me.
Budgie reaches forward and fiddles with the radio dials. The car, a nifty new Ford V-8, has been equipped with every convenience by her doting father and presented to her a month ago as an early graduation present. Nine months early, to be exact, because he, in his trust and blindness, wants her to make use of it during her last year at Smith.
