Summer Island: A Novel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The renowned author of The Women presents a poignant, funny, luminous novel about a mother and daughter—the complex ties that bind them, the past that separates them, and the healing that comes with forgiveness.

“[Kristin] Hannah is superb at delving into the characters’ psyches and delineating nuances of feeling.”—Washington Post Book World

Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. She has since become a famous radio talk-show host and newspaper columnist beloved for her moral advice. Her youngest daughter, Ruby, is a struggling comedienne who uses her famous mother as fuel for her bitter, cynical humor. When the tabloids unearth a scandalous secret from Nora’s past, their estrangement suddenly becomes dramatic: Nora is injured in an accident and a glossy magazine offers Ruby a fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. Under false pretenses, Ruby returns home to take care of the woman she hasn't spoken to for almost a decade.

Nora insists they retreat to Summer Island in the San Juans, to the lovely old house on the water where Ruby grew up, a place filled with childhood memories of love and joy and belonging. There Ruby is also reunited with her first love and his brother. Once, the three of them had been best friends, inseparable. Until the summer that Nora had left and everyone's hearts had been broken. . . .

What began as an expose evolves, as Ruby writes, into an exploration of her family’s past. Nora is not the woman Ruby has hated all these years. Witty, wise, and vulnerable, she is desperate to reconcile with her daughter. As the magazine deadline draws near and Ruby finishes what has begun to seem to her an act of brutal betrayal, she is forced to grow up and at last to look at her mother—and herself—through the eyes of a woman. And she must, finally, allow herself to love.

Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than 20 novels. Her newest novel, The Women, about the nurses who served in the Vietnam war, will be released on February 6, 2024.

The Four Winds was published in February of 2021 and immediately hit #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Indie bookstore's bestseller lists. Additionally, it was selected as a book club pick by the both Today Show and The Book Of the Month club, which named it the best book of 2021.

In 2018, The Great Alone became an instant New York Times #1 bestseller and was named the Best Historical Novel of the Year by Goodreads.

In 2015, The Nightingale became an international blockbuster and was Goodreads Best Historical fiction novel for 2015 and won the coveted People's Choice award for best fiction in the same year. It was named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, iTunes, Buzzfeed, the Wall Street Journal, Paste, and The Week.

The Nightingale is currently in pre-production at Tri Star. Firefly Lane, her beloved novel about two best friends, was the #1 Netflix series around the world, in the week it came out. The popular tv show stars Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke.

“A fascinating story of love, healing, forgiveness . . . certain to strike a chord in the hearts of mothers and daughters everywhere.”—Tulsa World

“A warm and touching story about very human characters whose personal situations come to life with realism and sensitivity.”—Library Journal

“Many a daughter will see something of herself in Ruby.”—People

“Totally brilliant.”—The Midwest Book Review

“A beautiful novel, funny and tender, sad and wonderfully satisfying.”—Tahoe Tribune

Summer Island by Kristin Hannah is an emotional family novel about the long, painful distance between a mother and daughter, and the slow, complicated process of finding their way back to each other. At the center of the story is Nora Bridge, a famous advice columnist and radio host who has built a public life around wisdom, warmth, and emotional insight. To the world, she seems like the kind of woman who understands people perfectly. To her younger daughter, Ruby, however, Nora is the woman who left, the woman who caused years of anger, confusion, and heartbreak. That split between Nora’s public image and private failures shapes the whole novel and gives it much of its power.

Ruby has spent years carrying resentment toward her mother. She is a struggling comedian with a sharp, cynical sense of humor, and much of that humor comes from pain. She uses her mother as material in her act, turning family wounds into jokes because that is easier than facing them directly. Ruby’s life is not easy. She is frustrated with her career, financially uncertain, and still emotionally tied to the absence left by Nora’s departure. Even when she tries to move forward, she cannot fully escape the influence of that old wound. Kristin Hannah presents Ruby as funny, intelligent, and guarded, but also deeply lonely, someone who has built her identity around resistance because grief and betrayal have been so central to her life.

The story begins when Nora’s carefully controlled public world starts to collapse. A scandal from her past resurfaces, threatening her reputation and exposing secrets she would rather keep buried. Then she is injured in an accident, and suddenly Ruby is pulled back into her mother’s life. Ruby agrees to return home and care for Nora, partly out of duty and partly because of the money offered to her for writing a tell-all piece about her mother. That setup gives the novel an edge of tension right away, because Ruby is not coming home out of forgiveness or affection. She is coming under false pretenses, still angry, still wounded, and still unsure whether she can trust anything her mother says.

Nora wants to retreat to Summer Island, a place in the San Juan Islands where Ruby grew up and where the family once felt whole. The island matters a great deal in the novel because it holds both joy and loss. It is where Ruby’s happiest memories live, but it is also where everything changed when Nora left. Coming back there forces Ruby to confront the past in a physical, emotional way. The house, the water, the familiar setting, and the memories associated with them all become part of the story’s emotional landscape. The island is not only a place of rest; it is a place where buried truths start to surface.

As Ruby spends time with Nora, the story begins to change shape. What at first seems like a bitter reunion slowly turns into something more complicated and more revealing. Ruby starts to see that Nora is not just the selfish, abandoning mother she has imagined for so many years. Nora is also vulnerable, witty, exhausted, and deeply human. She has made painful decisions, and while those choices do not erase the damage she caused, they make her harder to hate in simple terms. The novel does not excuse her failures, but it does insist on understanding them. That is one of the book’s strengths: it allows room for anger while also asking whether anger can remain the only truth.

The process of writing and investigating Nora’s past becomes a kind of emotional education for Ruby. As she learns more, she begins to understand that stories told from one side are often incomplete. What she thought was abandonment may also contain sacrifice, fear, and regret. This discovery does not make everything easy, and it does not magically repair the relationship. Instead, it opens the door to a more honest kind of conversation. Ruby is forced to reconsider not only her mother, but also herself, her own bitterness, and the ways she has let old pain shape her life.

The novel also includes a romantic thread through Ruby’s reunion with her first love from Summer Island. His return stirs up memories of youth, closeness, and a version of herself that existed before betrayal hardened her. This relationship adds warmth and hope to the story, but it also deepens the emotional stakes. Ruby is not only reconnecting with her past in the form of family; she is also remembering what it felt like to be loved before her life became defined by resentment. That helps her see that healing is possible, even if it is difficult and incomplete.

Kristin Hannah writes the book with a mix of tenderness, sadness, and humor. The emotional intensity is balanced by moments of wit and family intimacy, which keeps the novel from becoming too heavy. The writing gives equal attention to the pain of old wounds and the comfort of small, human moments: shared conversations, familiar places, and the possibility of forgiveness that begins with simple honesty. The story is ultimately about learning that forgiveness is not the same as forgetting, and that love can remain present even after years of hurt.

By the end, Summer Island becomes a story about reconciliation in the fullest sense. It is not just about a daughter forgiving a mother, or a mother asking for mercy. It is about both women growing enough to see each other more clearly, without the old assumptions that have kept them apart. The novel suggests that families are often broken in ways that cannot be fixed quickly, but they can still be understood, softened, and sometimes healed. That is what makes the book so moving. It takes a painful family history and turns it into a story about truth, memory, and the hard work of choosing love again.