Synopses & Reviews
The Howells family are revisited in the summer of 1991. David, 18, is preparing to go to Harvard and Sarah is now 13. A young woman, Netta Breckenridge, enters the family's lives and creates a fragile domesticity for the Howells.
Review
"This novel, a sequel to Dale Loves Sophie to Death, spans a tumultuous summer in the Howells family, a summer in which the family must cope with the lingering repercussions of their younger son's death six years before. But their surviving son's imminent departure for Harvard as well as-the intrusion of an unhappy young mother tax the resilience of the family. Dew's novel is earnest and sometimes affecting, but it is marred by prose more declarative than evocative and dialogue that is by turns both wooden and melodramatic. The characterization of David, the surviving son, supplies much-needed doses of astringent irony." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)