Synopses & Reviews
Thought to be lost for over 50 years, here is the first novel by one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Set in New York during the summer of 1945, this is the story of a young carefree socialite, Grady, who must make serious decisions about the romance she is dangerously pursuing and the effect it will have on everyone involved.
Fans of Breakfast at Tiffanys and Capotes short stories will be thrilled to read Summer Crossing.
Review
"Capote is most consistently successful when simplistically specific, with moments of offhand, cast-off insight....Even if that clarity of style is only occasionally evident in Summer Crossing, the novel still offers a worthwhile chance to catch a glimpse of what it was like when full of hot blood Truman Capote began to write." Stephen Abell, the Times Literary Supplement (read the entire Times Literary Supplement review)
Synopsis
"Witness the coming together of Truman Capote's voice, the electric-into-neon blaze that is surely one of the premier styles of postwar American literature."--The Washington Post Book World
"A great breezy read . . . with Capote's trademark wit, but also with genuine youthful awe at the exhilaration of late-forties New York."--New York A lost treasure only recently found, Truman Capote's Summer Crossing is a precocious, confident first novel from one of the twentieth century's greatest writers.
Set in New York just after World War II, the story follows a young carefree socialite, Grady McNeil, whose parents leave her alone in their Fifth Avenue penthouse for the summer. Left to her own devices, Grady turns up the heat on the secret affair she's been having with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran who works as a parking lot attendant. As the season passes, the romance turns more serious and morally ambiguous, and Grady must eventually make a series of decisions that will forever affect her life and the lives of everyone around her.
About the Author
Truman Capote was a native of New Orleans, where he was born on September 30, 1924. His first novel,
Other Voices, Other Rooms, was an international literary success when first published in 1948, and accorded the author a prominent place among the writers of America's postwar generation. He sustained this position subsequently with short-story collections (
A Tree of Night, among others), novels and novellas (
The Grass Harp and
Breakfast at Tiffany's), some of the best travel writing of our time (
Local Color), profiles and reportage that appeared originally in
The New Yorker (
The Duke in His Domain and
The Muses Are Heard), a true-crime masterpiece (
In Cold Blood), several short memiors about his childhood in the South (
A Christmas Memory, The Thanksgiving Visitor, and One Christmas), two plays (
The Grass Harp and
House of Flowers and two films (
Beat the devil and
The Innocents).
Mr. Capote twice won the O.Henry Memorial Short Story Prize and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in August 1984, shortly before his sixtieth birthday.