Every Summer Day

by Lee Patton

Determined to record every summer day, young history teacher Luke Devlin starts school vacation imagining he'll describe backcountry adventures in the Rockies and sun-splashed days home in Denver. But all too soon the season veers into crisis, when his older brother faces life-threatening illness and Luke becomes entangled in a love affair that's as fast- moving and possibly as fatal as his brother's diagnosis. As Luke manages the household for his absent parents and struggles with the constant pressure of his unfinished master's deadline, his fling with a Wyoming rancher grows serious just as his brother's crisis overwhelms him. Luke's love of his native ground and his search for romance collide with the hard realities of mortality and loss during an unexpected summer.

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 2020

About the author

After growing up in an immigrant-lumbering-fishing town on California's Mendocino coast, and after college in Sacramento and San Francisco, I headed to Colorado to teach high school and work on my M.A. in Denver University's Writing Program. I still enjoy Denver's mellow city life, exploring the Rocky Mountains and the redrock canyons of western Colorado and southern Utah.

In the late 80's I joined a group of fellow poetry-writers assembled by Metropolitan State College professor Sandra Doe. We began to gather monthly, rotating hosting duties and proffering "affordable" bottles of Yugoslavian wine as we discussed each other's work. We continued the monthly sessions faithfully (even after Yugoslavia collapsed in the early 90's) and have done so to this day. To original groupies Sandy, Mell McDonnell, and Patty Holloway, we have added Denver poet Carson Reed.

At the same time, I found myself inspired to write plays for Denver's legendary Changing Scene, dedicated only to new work and artistic collaboration. That led me to develop plays around Denver as well as Arizona, New Hampshire, Oregon and Alaska, then Off-off Broadway in New York. Among my favorite experiences was working with renowned, adventurous director Jeremy Cole at the beginning of his career. He helped me develop NOT HEADHUNTERS and re-staged my first produced play, TORTURE: AN INTERROGATIVE COMEDY.

A scholarship sent me to London to study theatre, where a jealous-love murder threat in our dorm inspired the fictionalized events of my first novel, Nothing Gold Can Stay, (which I published as Casey Nelson to avoid embarrassing my fellow students and teachers in the U.K.). In the second novel, Love and Genetic Weaponry, I explored a completely fictitious Hitchcockian-paranoid-romance set among very real Western landscapes.

I'm also wrapping up a long-term creative nonfiction project in collaboration with journalist Kristen Hannum, an exploration of the American South and Southern identity. I have blogged about it at http://southwithinus.com

Reviews

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Every Summer Day’ by Lee Patton is many things - riveting, complex, devastating, even at times a little preachy - but it is not at all the story I had expected to read based on its description.

While the novel speaks to many things, “a love affair that’s as fast-moving and possibly as fatal as his brother’s diagnosis” seems at best ancillary to the rest of the narrative.

The greatest strength of ‘Every Summer Day’ is the wonderfully conceived main character, Luke Devlin. Patton has also created several other fascinating and important supporting characters.

The great weakness of the book is the extraordinary number of contemporary issues the author has chosen to raise, many with just the briefest of exposition. The only thing missing is a pandemic.

‘Every Summer Day’ is presented as a a diary chronicling Luke Devlin’s 29th summer.

Luke Devlin is an openly gay Denver high school history teacher who is working on his master’s thesis in American history. He’s spent his entire life idolizing his older brother, Matt. Matt created and currently owns Book Cliff Cyclery and Horsethief Adventures, a Colorado bike and river tour company.

Matt’s fiancé, Jenn, is an aspiring actress who tends bar and does TV commercials for the Clean Energy Council, a front for gas and oil companies.

Mr. Patton has populated his novel with a host of additional characters including Drs. Ted and Kathy Devlin, the Devlin brother’s parents who are world renowned experts on endangered species in the Amazon; Damien, a gay male nurse who is Luke’s best friend; and Emily, Luke’s best female friend. Emily’s husband was killed in Afghanistan leaving her to raise their son, Marco. Marco, now 11, is going through an unexplained homophobic phase, suddenly rejecting Luke who had been a former mentor and father figure.

There are even more characters, many of whom appear only briefly, who significantly impact the story line.

Finally, there is “the fast moving-love affair”. It’s just that - fast.

Luke meets and rapidly falls in love with Jeffrey Douglas, a 40-year old Wyoming rancher with a summer home in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Both Luke and Jeff are interested in history and philosophy. Despite their age difference, they quickly fall in love. That love grows until an unidentified gay man comes up to Luke in a Denver bar and tells him that Jeff isn’t the person he pretends to be. Luke confronts Jeff, and following that brief confrontation, he severs their relationship. From that point on, until nearly the final pages of the novel, there is no further contact between Luke and Jeff.

‘Every Summer Day’ raises numerous contemporary issues. For me there were far too many issues to adequately address them all. Among those mentioned are: the beauty and fragility of nature, the health and environmental problems created at major Superfund site, environmental protectionism, environmental ethics, climate change, animal rights, philosophy, religion, existentialism, faith, death, loss, racism, homophobia, bigotry, the educational and health care systems, income inequality, the benefits of a stable home, and the healing love of family and friends.

I received an Advance Review Copy of ‘Every Summer Day’ from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books in exchange for an honest review. #Every Summer Day #NetGalley

[Joyfully Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Joyfully Jay review.

3 stars

I really enjoy books that have this framework—almost a story within a story as a character records their journey over a particular time frame. That is the case here somewhat and Luke has a story to tell, but the narrative offered too much and then not enough almost simultaneously.

The book opens at the end, in the month of December, and we know upfront one major event that happens. The story then moves back to the month of June and is divided into parts over the next four months. Luke is close to his brother, but when he spends time with Matt at the lake, he knows something is off and encourages him to see a doctor. This sets off a good portion of the story as Luke deals with Matt’s diagnosis. Luke also meets an older man and gets caught up in a love affair and falls in love in a few weeks.

The journal entries are woven into the story, but they had the same tone as the rest of the book and didn’t offer much different information then what we were given in the main part of the book, so the part that was supposed to hook me fell flat.

Read Michelle's review in its entirety here.

[Two Nerds With Words · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and complex story that while it kept me turning the pages as I wanted to reach the conclusion, the journey and pacing that got me there was a little slow going.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Every Summer Day to be a sweet, caring look at the remarkable bond between two brothers - a bond tested by circumstances outside their control. It also serves as a love letter to its Colorado setting. I lived in that gorgeous state for 20 years, and the author's descriptions made me homesick to return. In addition to the central story, we are given other sub-plots revolving around romance, homophobia, and a number of environmental and ethical issues. If the book feels a bit crowded with the number and variety of moral challenges its characters face, well...it's a minor failing. My life, too, feels crowded by competing priorities and ethical quandaries (so many boycotts, so many hashtags, so many petitions). It's hard to fault a book for having a social conscience. It is the characters who truly stick with you after the novel has ended. I found myself wanting to hold onto them, just as we all yearn to hang on to those too-fleeting Summer days.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a tough one for me to review. I’m a bit unclear on who the intended audience of the book is as the description varies quite a lot from what the actual book is about. Let’s jump right in!

The book description reads as though this book may be a summer of discovery, loss, and love. I wouldn’t use that description for this book. I can get the “love” aspect out of the way right off the bat. The main character Luke does meet an older man, Jeff. They get together extremely quickly… then after a single meeting with a complete stranger who passes on some information … Luke is done with the relationship. There’s really no indication any further in the novel if the two men continue to be connected. I’m not even certain this relationship was necessary at all for the novel to be a complete story.

The book is taken up with a variety of issues that, at times, seem to overwhelm the plot. The author goes into elaborate detail about philosophy, vegetarianism, anti-meat eating, environmentalism, existentialism, infidelity, coming out late in life, homophobia, religion … I’m sure there are more that I’m forgetting. I thought the author did a great job of writing about all of those things and making it accessible…but there was a bit too much of it. There are parts of the novel that read more like a textbook than fiction.

The main relationship in the book is that of Luke and his brother Matt. Their relationship is lovely and I really enjoyed the times they were together. I loved how the author managed to convey the way in which brothers can be extremely close. Luke and Matt were really well-written. I think I almost enjoyed Matt’s characterization more as he struggled with his entire life-changing. There was a kind of subtle bravery and steadfastness to Matt that seemed very authentic.

I think this was a recounting of a summer in which some terrible things happened but some of the emotion got lost because of the many issues that were being covered by the author. The downward spiral of a main character's illness is the primary plot in the story and it’s a bit bogged down in the rest of the issues that are peppered throughout the story.

I can't say that I enjoyed this book, after all, there's little to enjoy about losing a family member. There's an audience for every book though... and I believe that.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like Bridget Jones Diary, The Color Purple, Flowers for Algernon, and many other novels, much of Every Summer Day is written in the form of a journal. The main character, Luke Devlin, is a high-school history teacher and grad student in his late twenties. As the novel opens, he is freshly out of school and looks forward to what promises to be a perfect summer. He will be housesitting for his parents—they are both scientists working in South America. He plans to spend a relaxing summer in Denver with trips to visit his brother who owns a bike shop and runs an adventure tourism company in western Colorado. He buys a leather notebook to keep track of what he feels will be a thoroughly happy time. It doesn’t work out quite that way.
In a writing class I took some years ago, I remember the instructor saying that the novels that she enjoyed, that she respected, were not plot based or character based. They were based on relationships: relationships between family and friends and even relationships between opponents and enemies. She would have liked this book a lot, I think.
Probably the most important relationship in the novel is the one between Luke and his older brother Matt. They are close but—like most brothers—have a playful relationship, replete with mock put-downs. It’s clear that Luke looks up to his brother but also is awed and maybe a little intimidated by him. Luke talks about how, as a young child, he used to sit on the steps, waiting for his brother to come home from school. During the summer described in the book, Matt begins to have health issues and before long it is discovered that he has a brain tumor. Despite the seriousness of the situation, the brothers’ relationship doesn’t change—they still manage to tease each other in a way that is endearing. The author chronicles Matt’s medical problems and his treatment in detail—in realistic detail. Matt’s deteriorating health is an emotional jolt for the reader.
Another important relationship explored in the novel is the relationship between Luke and Jeff—a “cowpoke” (prosperous cattle rancher, really) from Wyoming whom Luke meets in a Denver bar. Jeff seems to be a perfect match for Luke—intelligent, philosophical, and apparently a good lover. Then Luke discovers that Jeff is married, and Luke splits up with him and ignores him--despite Jeff’s best efforts-- throughout most of the novel. By the end of the book, however, there are hints that this relationship may work out in the end.
Luke’s best friend is a woman named Emily—she’s been his friend since they were kids. There is something fascinating about a male-female relationship that has no possibility of working out sexually. She is the sort of friend almost anyone would want: supportive, intelligent, and funny. Her adolescent son, unfortunately, has turned into a snarky homophobe who detests Luke’s homosexuality. How she and Luke deal with this is one of the more interesting aspects of the novel.
I always enjoy novels that take place in settings I am familiar with—it makes the scenes so much more vivid. That’s one reason I enjoy the novels of Stephen White set in Boulder and the Robert Parker novels set in Boston. Although it’s been a long time, I once lived in the neighborhood of Denver not all that far from where most of the action of the novel takes place.
There are lyrical sections of the novel, passages that soar. The scene in which Luke hikes to the top of South Arapahoe Peak amid a dramatic and dangerous electrical storm is one of these. Readers can’t help but feel they are on top of that mountain with Luke during the storm.
Surely this novel will be classified by some as “gay fiction,” and I suppose it is, although there are no explicit gay scenes. But like black fiction, Christian fiction, women's fiction, and so on-it is the “fiction” that is important. In other words, it is the writing, not the context that is important. And--as a straight guy-- I feel that anyone who runs across this novel will find it an enjoyable read.