What do you think?
Rate this book
The Golden Summer
From the book jacket's left flap:
The Golden Summer is the story of a forty-six-year-old man looking back to his boyhood--back to the year 1915 in a small town in upstate New York. Being only human, the grown man sometimes looks back through rose-tinted glasses, seeing only what he wants to see; but at other times he sees himself exactly as he was--an overambitious ten-year-old possessed of much too vivid an imagination.
It is a story for all those, old and young alike, who have read and enjoyed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Penrod--and especially for those who would like to escape the fears and confusions of today and go back, if only for a few hours, to a time of "incredible innocence and security."
Come then on the wings of memory--back to "li'l peanut" Danny Nathan and his two best friends, Chad and Sartorious, and the story of what they did and what happened to them--and especially of the many roles Danny himself played--theatrical manager, bibliophile, retail merchant, poet, judge, athlete, artist, detective, auctioneer, industrial magnate--and all, you should be warned, after his own fashion.
The Golden Summer is full of warmth and pathos and humor . . . the story of everyone's nostalgia for his childhood--everyone who still has "a secret hiding place somewhere in his heart."
The Golden Summer is the story of a forty-six-year-old man looking back to his boyhood--back to the year 1915 in a small town in upstate New York. Being only human, the grown man sometimes looks back through rose-tinted glasses, seeing only what he wants to see; but at other times he sees himself exactly as he was--an overambitious ten-year-old possessed of much too vivid an imagination.
It is a story for all those, old and young alike, who have read and enjoyed The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Penrod--and especially for those who would like to escape the fears and confusions of today and go back, if only for a few hours, to a time of "incredible innocence and security."
Come then on the wings of memory--back to "li'l peanut" Danny Nathan and his two best friends, Chad and Sartorious, and the story of what they did and what happened to them--and especially of the many roles Danny himself played--theatrical manager, bibliophile, retail merchant, poet, judge, athlete, artist, detective, auctioneer, industrial magnate--and all, you should be warned, after his own fashion.
The Golden Summer is full of warmth and pathos and humor . . . the story of everyone's nostalgia for his childhood--everyone who still has "a secret hiding place somewhere in his heart."
215 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1953
4 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 13, 2019
An exceptional book that if it weren't for Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer, would probably be an American classic. A tale of a 10 year old boy's summer set in the early 1900's in rural upper New York state. The reader will take away with him the innocence of childhood in a very well written book by one half of the cousin duo of Frederic Dannay (Daniel Nathan) and Manfred Bennington Lee, the two authors who brought us Ellery Queen. What separates Twain's stories from Nathan's? Probably the sideways look that Twain gave us into the vagaries of the South, especially the question of the social and cultural mores of a racially sensitive environment that was the American South in the 1870's. Anyway, a very well written book with a classic literary sense of prose and an entertaining and wonderful good read.
July 20, 2019
A charming book writing by one half of "Ellery Queen," writing under his birth name. (He later took the name of Frederic Dannay.) The book is like "Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer of St Petersburg, Missouri, meets Ray Bradbury's Douglas Spaulding of Green Town, Illinois." I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
