The Summer We Buried: A Novel

by Jody Gehrman

Overview

An unthinkable crime—and the tattered threads of a friendship gone wrong—come roaring back to terrible new life in Jody Gehrman’s riveting psychological suspense, perfect for fans of Joshilyn Jackson.

Twenty years ago, Tansy was drawn to Selene’s hard edges, her grit, and her knack for survival. Since then, the confused tangle of guilt about covering up a murder shattered their friendship, and even now, at thirty-eight, Tansy has never come to terms with what happened that night.

But now, Selene is back, demanding her old friend repay her. Selene’s daughter, Jupiter, attends the college where Tansy works as a guidance counselor. Selene is convinced that Jupiter’s boyfriend, Colton, is abusive, and wants Tansy to intervene. As she is drawn back into the intensity of Selene’s world, Tansy discovers the ugly truth about Colton. But Tansy suspects there’s far more to the story, and now she’ll finally have to confront Selene once and for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643859231
Publisher:	CROOKED LANE BOOKS
Publication date:	03/08/2022
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	214,206
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Jody Gehrman has authored several novels and numerous plays for stage and screen. Her young-adult novel, Babe in Boyland, won the International Reading Association's Teen Choice Award and was optioned by the Disney Channel. Jody's plays have been produced or had staged readings in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. Her full-length, Tribal Life in America, won the Ebell Playwrights Prize and received a staged reading at the historic Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She holds a Masters Degree in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California and is a professor of Communications at Mendocino College in Northern California.

Editorial Reviews

01/10/2022

Tansy Elliot, the narrator of this gripping novel from Gehrman (The Girls Weekend), leads a relatively serene life as a guidance counselor at Valley of the Moon University in Sonoma, Calif., until Selene Rathbone appears at her office, having booked an appointment under an assumed name. The two share a terrible secret concerning a criminal act 20 years ago about which Tansy has felt guilty ever since. Tansy knows she shouldn’t get involved with Selene again, but Selene threatens to reveal their secret to the police unless Tansy does her bidding. Selene’s daughter, Jupiter, a student at the university, is living with Colton Blake, a man Selene thinks is abusive. She wants Tansy to make sure Jupiter breaks up with Colton. As Selene draws Tansy further and further into her grasp, Tansy comes to realize Selene has a hidden agenda. The romantic relationship that develops between Tansy and Selene’s brother raises the stakes. Gehrman keeps the suspense high up to the final showdown. Psychological thriller fans will find much to like. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Summer We Buried:
"Gripping . . . Gehrman keeps the suspense high . . . Psychological thriller fans will find much to like."
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Girls Weekend:
“A brooding meditation on how friendships buckle when we resent other people’s success.”
—The Washington Post
 
“[An] exhilarating, atmospheric thriller exploring the darker side of friendship. With dazzling prose and an eerily beautiful setting, The Girls Weekend delivers some ugly but necessary truths." 
—Megan Collins, author of The Winter Sister

"From its irresistible first sentence to the final page, The Girls Weekend is a captivating who-done-it and a tour de force thriller . . . Simply unputdownable."
—Paula Treick DeBoard, critically acclaimed author of Here We Lie and The Drowning Girls

“Clear your schedule, because once you pick The Girls’ Weekend up, you won’t be able to set it down.”
—Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke, bestselling authors of The Two Lila Bennetts

"A heart-pounding thriller that will have you guessing until the very end! Not to be missed." 
—Elle Marr, author of The Missing Sister

“Gehrman does a good job delineating the women’s individual characters.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“A Celtic knot of suspense and surprise."
—Red Carpet Crash
 
“A Mean Girls reunion.”
—New York Journal of Books
 
“I highly recommend this.”
—Seattle Book Review

From the Publisher

2021-12-15
A strong professional woman turns to jelly when her old college friend abruptly appears to ask a very loaded favor.

Massage therapist Selene Rathbone has had a hold over Tansy Elliot ever since the night 18 years ago when the two of them agreed to keep mum about an attempted rape and its fatal consequences. Now Selene has popped up again to exact payment. Worried that her daughter, Jupiter, is being emotionally abused by her boyfriend, Colton Blake, she insists that Tansy, a guidance counselor at Sonoma’s Valley of the Moon University, take Jupiter, a VMU undergraduate, in hand and persuade her to ditch Colton, or at least to lift the restraining order he’s persuaded Jupiter to file against her flamboyant, interfering mother. Recognizing both Selene’s power over her and the serious breach of professional ethics she’s demanding, Tansy, a former singer and songwriter who still misses her band, the Insatiables, which broke up when its bass player died of a heroin overdose, temporizes and dithers long enough to field some barely veiled threats from Colton’s father, Henry Blake, the local district attorney and VMU trustee, and fall for Selene’s kid brother, Zack, a professor of psychology at VMU and a sometime FBI consultant to boot. Everybody involved has a different agenda they’re desperately trying to keep secret from everybody else, but the main thing that changes when the secrets come out is another burst of violence that suggests that that summer 18 years ago may not be the only time that ends up getting buried.

More smoke than fire.

Kirkus Reviews