The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach
By Pam Jenoff
Publisher: MIRA
Release Date: July 28, 2015
In 1941, with Hitler's grip on Europe strengthening, sixteen-year-old Jewish Italian, Adelia Monteforte is spirited onto a ship headed to America by her mother. Leaving everything she has known behind, Adelia arrives in Philadelphia where she is met by her aunt and uncle and taken to their summer rental at the Jersey shore. It is there that she first meets the Irish-Catholic Connelly family: four boisterous boys and their welcoming parents who almost immediately claim Adelia as one of their own. She forms different relationships with each of the boys: one nurturing, another, easy friendship, and a third one, challenging and a bit uneasy. But it's the eldest son, Charlie, a handsome athlete a few years older who captures her attention and her young heart.
Back in the city, Adelia's friendship with Charlie deepens and, eventually, they declare their feelings for one another but just as they are ready to share this news with their families a tragedy tears the Connelly family apart and they disappear from Philadelphia. When next they meet, Charlie is a soldier and Adelia is working for a newspaper in Washington, DC. It's apparent that the feelings they had for one another are still there but Adelia isn't ready to face them and runs, asking her boss to send her to the paper's London office where her translation and copy editing skills can be put to use in covering the war.
Almost another year passes before Charlie arrives in London in advance of the Normandy Invasion. Adelia has grown in their time apart, finding her place in journalism as well as being changed and strengthened by the people she meets and things she has seen in war-torn London. No longer the scared young girl who idolized Charlie, she's ready to meet him as an equal. Will the timing finally be right for them or are they destined to travel roads they never anticipated?
This was my first book by Jenoff but it won't be the last. She has created a deeply emotional story of love, loss, redemption and the healing road home. She did an excellent job of capturing the emotion of war-torn London and the dawning horror of Hitler's atrocities as well as the mood of America in the days leading up to, and following, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war. The London scenes in particular are well researched, evoking the fear, intrigue, determination, and, at times, hopelessness of those living there.
My only quibble with the book was the final four chapters. While I was happy with the outcome (it was what I had hoped for), it felt rushed to me. Jenoff was generous in the time she took to develop characters during the first three-quarters of the book. I would have liked to have seen that same generosity in the final chapters. The emotions and relationships of several characters would have been richer and more believable had more time been given to them as well as allowing more time to pass between both the tragedy and a pivotal scene in London and the end of the book.
~PJ
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Pam Jenoff is the Quill-nominated internationally bestselling author of The Kommadant’s Girl. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University and a master’s degree in history from Cambridge, and she received her Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania. Jenoff’s novels are based on her experiences working at the Pentagon and also as a diplomat for the State Department handling Holocaust issues in Poland. She lives with her husband and three children near Philadelphia where, in addition to writing, she teaches law school.
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Adelia Montforte begins the summer of 1941 aboard a crowded ship bound for America, utterly alone yet free of Fascist Italy. Whisked away to the seaside by her well-meaning aunt and uncle, she slowly begins to adapt to her new life. That summer, she basks in the noisy affection of the boisterous Irish-Catholic boys next door, and although she adores all four of the Connally brothers, it’s the eldest, Charlie, she pines for. But all hopes for a future together are throttled by the creep of war and a tragedy that hits much closer to home.
Needing to distance herself from grief, Addie flees – first to Washington and then London, where the bombs still scream by night – and finds a passion at a prestigious newspaper. More so, she finds a purpose. A voice. And perhaps even a chance to redeem lost time, lost family – and lost love. But the past, never far behind, nips at her heels, demanding to be reckoned with. And in a final, fateful choice, Addie discovers that the way home may be a path she never suspected.
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