About this item
Under a Dark Summer Sky is a stunning debut novel, at once a love story set in a time of great turmoil and a vivid depiction of a major natural disaster. Florida, 1935. In Heron Key, relationships are as tangled as the swamp's mangrove roots. It's been eighteen long years since Henry went away to war. Still, Missy has waited, cleaning the Kincaids' house and counting the stars. Now he's back, but she barely recognizes the desperate, destitute veteran he's become -- unsure of his future, ashamed of his past. When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death after the Fourth of July barbecue, suspicion falls on him immediately. As tensions rise in the small community, the barometer starts to plummet -- a massive hurricane is on its way.Based on real historical events,Under a Dark Summer Sky evokes what happens when people, sweating under the weight of their pasts, are tested to the absolute limits of their endurance.
About the Author
Please visit www.vanessalafaye.wordpress.com for more information.
I was born in Tallahassee, FL in 1963 but the family moved to Tampa soon after. This is where I was raised and schooled until I left for Duke University in 1981. We lived on the middle of three inter-connected freshwater lakes, in a new suburb carved out of the swamp. There was plenty of wildlife, including turtles which feasted on each new clutch of baby ducks, slurping their fluffy yellow bodies right under the water; palmetto bugs, which are flying cockroaches the size of hamsters; and a geriatric alligator who just wanted to be left in peace. My brother and I dug Native American arrow heads from the muddy shore.
There were hurricanes most years, strong enough to send us scurrying for the safety of the bedroom closets, but nothing on the scale depicted in UNDER A DARK SUMMER SKY. I am happy to say that I've never experienced a natural disaster of that magnitude. The summer rains routinely submerged our back lawn completely, and we loved watching fish swim among the blades of grass. Shoes are not that practical in the tropics, so I spent a lot of time barefoot, even at school. Summers were spent mostly underwater - either fresh or sea - as it was the best way to escape the heat.
In 1981 I began a BsC degree in Zoology at Duke University in North Carolina, which included a semester at the Université de Paris. I very nearly did not return to the US to complete my degree, so smitten was I with the adventure of life in Europe. When I did come back, it was not for long. Paris called to me but, like a failed attempt at rekindling a romance, things were awkward and difficult the second time. Over the course of several months, Paris and I fell out of love with each other. Homeless and jobless, I slunk, defeated, back to the UK, where I had worked briefly on my way back to France.
There I gave up my dream of a glamorous French life and settled into a more recognizably grown-up existence, with a career in academic publishing, a mortgage, a marriage. A cat. While it wasn't as exciting as my Paris adventure, there were still plenty of strange things about the British way of life. I got used to being offered baked beans with almost everything. I tuned into the subtle distinctions of accent and behavior which separate the social classes. I became aware that, as a foreigner, I was exempt from the standards of behavior expected of natives. British people seemed really pleased, and somehow proud, that I ate with utensils and kept my feet off the table.
As my career thrived, the marriage did the opposite, and I became single again in 1996. There followed several years of outright romantic disaster, in the steam age of the internet. I met James, now my husband, in 1999, and moved from Oxford to Marlborough in Wiltshire in 2003. Soon after, I began writing feature articles for the newspapers. Writing was always a part of my life, f
