• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (August 3, 2010)

The dog days of August . . . All summer long, thirteen-year-old Henry kept hoping that something different would happen, but it never did.

Then, just as the Labor Day weekend gets under way, in the Pricemart where Henry?s mother, Adele, on one of her rare forays out of the house and into the wider world has taken him to buy pants for school, a bleeding man approaches Henry and asks for help.

Frank is a man with a secret, and a man on the run. Adele is a wounded soul whose dreams of family life and romantic dancing died years ago, even before her husband left her and their son. And Henry is a “loser” and a loner, a boy on the cusp of manhood who, over the next five days, will learn some of life?s most valuable lessons: how to throw a baseball, the secret to perfect peach pie, and the importance of placing others–especially those you love–above yourself.

About Joyce Maynard

Joyce Maynard first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life” in 1973, when she was a freshman at Yale. Since then, she has been a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, a syndicated newspaper columnist whose “Domestic Affairs” column appeared in more than fifty papers nationwide, a regular contributor to NPR. Her writing has also been published in national magazines, including O, The Oprah Magazine; Newsweek; The New York Times Magazine; Forbes; Salon; San Francisco Magazine, USA Weekly; and many more. She has appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Charlie Rose, and on Fresh Air. Essays of hers appear in numerous collections. She has been a fellow at Yaddo, UCross, and The MacDowell Colony, where she wrote her most recently published novel, Labor Day.

The author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel To Die For (in which she also plays the role of Nicole Kidman’s attorney) and the bestselling memoir, At Home in the World, Maynard makes her home in Mill Valley, California. Her novel, The Usual Rules—a story about surviving loss—has been a favorite of book club audiences of all ages, and was chosen by the American Library Association as one of the ten best books for young readers for 2003.

Joyce Maynard also runs the Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop in Guatemala, founded in 2002.

Connect with Joyce:

• On her website
• Join her mailing list

Joyce’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS

Thursday, July 22nd: Jenn’s Bookshelves

Monday, July 26th: Café of Dreams

Wednesday, July 28th: Rundpinne

Monday, August 2nd: Book Chatter

Tuesday, August 3rd: Jo-Jo Loves to Read!

Wednesday, August 4th: excess baggage

Thursday, August 5th: Peetswea

Friday, August 6th: Stiletto Storytime

Monday, August 9th: Alison’s Book Marks

Tuesday, August 10th: Lisa’s Yarns

Wednesday, August 11th: Bookstack

Thursday, August 12th: The 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness

“[A] well-crafted and cunning debut novel…a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.”
—Publishers Weekly

The Summer We Fell Apart by newcomer Robin Antalek is a poignant, funny, and totally engrossing novel of family disasters and sibling rivalry—and it marks the debut of a pitch-perfect new voice in contemporary American fiction. Antalek’s tale of the trials and many tribulations of the hapless and more than a little dysfunctional Haas family recalls the work of Sue Miller and Ann Beattie—and is a wonderful introduction to a superb writer whose short fiction has been nominated for numerous awards, including the Glimmer Train’s Family Matters and Short-Story Award and the Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction.

The children of a once-brilliant playwright and a struggling actress, the four Haas siblings grew up in chaos—raised in an environment composed of neglect and glamour in equal measure. When their father dies, they must depend on their intense but fragile bond to remember what it means to be family despite years of anger and hurt. These brothers and sisters are painfully human, sometimes selfish, and almost always making the wrong decisions, but their endearing struggles provide laughter through tears—something anyone who’s ever had a sibling can relate to.

About Robin

After making a career out of changing careers, from PR to tending bar, and from waitressing to managing a modern dance company, Robin Antalek eventually gave in to the voices in her head and began writing fiction. She studied at The New York State Writer’s Institute at the State University of New York at Albany, and has published in many literary journals: Sun Dog: The Southeast Review, Literary Mama, among others, and has twice been a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Family Matters contests as well as a finalist for The Tobias Wolf Award for Short Fiction. You can also find her nonfiction essays monthly on the web at The Nervous Breakdown.

The Summer We Fell Apart is her first novel. She lives in a very needy Victorian house in Saratoga Springs, New York, with her husband, two daughters, and three dogs.

Visit Robin Antalek’s website.

Check out the book trailer below!

Robin’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS

Monday, January 18th: Regular Rumination

Thursday, January 21st: Dolce Bellezza

Tuesday, January 26th: Take Me Away

Thursday, January 28th: Booksie’s Blog

Tuesday, February 2nd: Books and Movies

Thursday, February 4th: Raging Bibliomania

Tuesday, February 9th: Lit and Life

Thursday, February 11th: BookNAround

Tuesday, February 16th: Write Meg

Wednesday, February 17th: All About {n}