The Summer Demands

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"Shapiro's prose is elegant, effortless, but it's her characters that will keep you up late into the night, hoping you can save them." — Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter On the verge of her fortieth birthday, and shaken by a recent miscarriage, Emily inherits an abandoned summer camp in Massachusetts. She and her husband move onto the property and make grand plans to revitalize the land. But they soon discover that their inheritance includes an unexpected guest. On a walk through the old campgrounds she once frequented as a girl, Emily discovers, living undetected in one of the cabins, a magnetic twenty-two-year-old named Stella. As the two women begin spending time together—talking and drinking, swimming in the lake, watching seductive French films through long afternoons—Emily finds herself playing at performing various roles relative to Stella: friend, mother, lover. Each encounter they shares promises to bring Emily a...