One Summer in Savannah

By: Terah Shelton Harris

Libby eBook  ?  chapters / Scott County Library hardcover 437 plus extras

Published: 2023

Genre: realistic fiction (Libby calls it "African American fiction" . . . )

 

I waited a long time to get this, read a bunch of chapters and couldn't renew it, waited a long time, . . . finally got it in print. Sometimes I just have too many books going on at a time! A friend recommended this as a community read book (in early spring!) and it has a lot of readers! I requested a print copy so I finally was able to finish it. The chapters are told from Sara's and Jacob's POV. Spoilers ahead, so read at your own risk!

Sara was raped by Jacob's twin brother Daniel as an 18 year old. Daniel's wealthy and connected mother was awful to Sara during the trial, accusing her of lying and trying to ruin Daniel's life. Sara moved to Maine when she learned she was pregnant, not wanting the Wyler family to try to take her baby away or make her life any more difficult. Loving little Alana isn't easy at first (due to how she came to be) but Sara falls in love with her daughter and is determined to protect her. When Sara's dad becomes gravely ill, Sara returns to Savannah, Georgia to be with him. Jacob, who defended her at the trial, has also returned home from working far away. His brother has cancer and needs a bone marrow transplant. (I keep forgetting that Jacob was originally David . . . his name change had to do with distancing himself from what happened when he and Daniel were eighteen. I think.)

On her opening page, she has two quotations:

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different." - Oprah Winfrey

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." - Mahatma Gandhi

The author wrote this book to be about forgiveness. I think this is a wonderful way to set the tone. In her Author's Note at the start of the book, she writes:

"If you find pieces of yourself in parts of Sara's story, please feel free to step away and come back when you feel comfortable; that's okay. If you choose not to return, that's okay, too. More than anything, I want you to be safe."

I don't think I've ever seen a message like that from an author. This new author is someone to watch! Also in her Author's Note, she writes:

"Forgiveness can be a powerful tool. It can loosen the knots we often tie ourselves. It can bandage up wounds, large and small. It can heal traumas, visible and invisible. But withholding forgiveness can also cause more harm than good. It can tighten its grip on you and keep you bound to the person who hurt you."

 

Because I read this book over several months (Libby ebook and physical print book), and the chapters are not numbered but just say "Sara" or "Jacob," these comments may not be in order! 

Sara: "That's the thing with Maine: Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes."

I thought that was a Minnesota thing! I wonder if people in all fifty states have that sense of the weather's changeability.

Sara: "I acknowledge the smothering grip I maintain on Alana. Being a mother is a lesson in impossible love."

 

 Love can show itself in many forms, but a mother's love for her child is powerful and unique!

 

Sara: "I was nine years old when my father started incorporating poetry into his speech. He finds peace in poetry, spending hours every day studying the artistry of it in all its forms, styles, and rhetoric. It beings a fresh sense of life to communicating, he once told me when he still spoke in prose. After my mother died in a car accident when I was five, words became difficult for him, and he spoke less and less. Eventually, other people's words became his way entirely."

 

I would not be as sanguine as Sara if my father only spoke to me in poetry. She is good at figuring out his intent, but it's not the most direct way to communicate. And how did he run the bookstore business without speaking in a clear, straightforward manner to vendors, customers, and employees?

 

Sara: "Remember this, I think. Remember him as he is now. The crescent dimple between his brows. The tenor of his voice. The love in his dark-brown eyes."

 

I have specific moments (mostly with my mom) that I remember all the more clearly because I knew that she would soon be gone.  I loved holding hands with her toward the end of her life. Sara is trying to hold on to the best of her father before he dies.

 

Jacob:  I learned that poems are as much about facts as anything else in the world.

 

It was very interesting that Jacob was a scientist (astrophysicist?) and yet was drawn to poetry, first by Sara's father, then by Sara. He was my favorite character in this book.

Jacob: They say the truth hurts. This truth knifes my heart and bleeds for my family, for Sara and Alana. One mistake. How one bad decision can alter the course of so many lives. Set us all on a course we never planned or imagined. But no matter how painful this truth is, it needs to be free.

This sadness comes on the heels of Jacob getting Daniel to admit that he raped Sara and didn't stop his mom from skewering her in court. I can't imagine the tension of both loving your sibling and hating what they've done.

Sara: (Sylvia) "Let's leave it alone and be grateful. Sometimes we don't need to question everything. We just need to let it be."

Sylvia was a pretty fantastic character, too! I'm so glad she was loving, calm, and wise. She was good for Sara and Sara's dad. Sara had been asking her about the Wyler money helping her dad's bookstore. She wanted answers. (I can relate!)

Sara: Forgiveness, I've learned, is like a door. You can open yourself up to it or close yourself off from it at any time. We can't rewrite history or change the outcome. Life is a series of choices. And we live in and with those choices we make.

This is part of an ending I didn't anticipate! Alana is the hero in this end scene in the hospital. I wish I'd read this in a timely fashion and had gotten into a book club discussion about it!