Summerlost: 03/22/19

Summerlost by Ally Condie is set in a fictional Iron Creek, a rural town that is recognizably inspired by Cedar Springs, UT. Cedar and her mother have come to her mother's childhood home town to recover and move on after the tragic death of Cedar's father and brother.

On her first day there, Cedar sees a boy about her age riding by on the two lane highway. With nothing else to do, she hops on her bike and follows him into the heart of the annual Shakespeare festival. Working at the festival gives her a chance to make new friends and to work through her grief.

In terms of the road narrative project, this one as a realistic, contemporary middle grade novel comes in low on the road narrative spectrum. It's a marginalized protagonist trying to adjust to her new home along a Blue Highway.

Cedar is marginalized because she is new to the town and she is young. She is also the surviving child of a grieving woman who is understandably now over protective. Thus her circumstances leave her with little in the way of agency.

Home is both the farm house along the highway she's moved into, as well as Iron Springs. Making her new situation home involves making new routines, new traditions, new friends, and accepting the direction her life has taken. Finally the road traveled is the Blue Highway that brought Cedar and her mother two Iron Creek. It's also the same road that Cedar takes every day to and from her summer job at the festival. The road gives her time to think things through. It is her place of spiritual transformation even if bodily, she's not traveling very far.

Four stars

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