Historical fiction / family saga

The Summer Country

by Lauren Willig

496 pages · First published 2020

Barbados, 1854. When Emily Dawson, the impoverished daughter of an English vicar, unexpectedly inherits a sugar plantation from her wealthy grandfather, she travels to the Caribbean hoping to understand why he left her a property no one knew he owned. But Peverills is little more than a burned-out ruin, destroyed during an uprising of enslaved people nearly forty years earlier. As Emily investigates her inheritance, she encounters the powerful Davenant family, who seem strangely determined to acquire the land, and discovers that her grandfather's past is far more complicated than she imagined. Alternating between Emily's experiences and the lives of plantation families and enslaved people in the years leading up to the 1816 rebellion, the story reveals a tangled history of forbidden love, betrayal, exploitation, and resistance. As long-buried family secrets emerge, Emily must confront the brutal legacy of slavery and reconsider everything she believes about her ancestry. Set against the lush beauty and troubled history of colonial Barbados, this sweeping historical saga explores freedom, identity, and the consequences of choices that echo across generations.