With a protagonist named Tallulah, THE MYTH OF PERPETUAL SUMMER is sure to be bathed in the glorious elements of good Southern writing --- family drama that haunts lifetimes and awaits consolation on the other side of heavy emotional traffic. Susan Crandall takes no prisoners in this story of family legacy and responsibility through the life perspective of a strong-willed woman built from the ashes of love and secrets that continue to threaten her sanity and will as she matures into a grown woman.

Tallulah James comes of age in a small town in the South, a staid Mississippi enclave where "spare the rod, spoil the child" is the law of the land. However, the James family is suffering through a difficult time when her volatile parents become embroiled in erratic behavior that brings all eyes to the hands-off approach they use with their offspring. Tallulah decides to ensure that her family's reputation becomes solid once again as she takes on the responsibilities of raising her twin siblings, Dharma and Walden, with her own youthful enthusiasm and care.

"Tallulah's journey offers a distinctive look into the unfulfilled attempts by so many in the 1960s to outrun the sins of their elders. Susan Crandall has fashioned an imaginative and emotionally compelling tale for the ages."

There's nothing better than family drama, if you ask me, and Crandall loads this book with details that keep the reader turning page after page at breakneck speed to discover the myriad of ways that Tallulah’s background continues to follow her into her adult future. A legacy of secrets and shame becomes evident as the carefully constructed walls she has built around her family history begin to crumble.

Tallulah's brother Griff, the oldest sibling, and her grandmother, an old-timey strong Southern woman, provided her with the strength she needed to weather the craziness of her childhood, and yet these people leave her eventually to handle the fallout of their lives on her own, yet again. Thinking that traveling westward would bring a culmination to the past and offer a bright future, Tallulah wends her way to Southern California, in search of peace and love, which she finds to be in short supply there as well. She is incapable of escaping the dysfunction of her family --- as is her brother, who ends up taking a disastrous path to put an end to the haunting of this world he thinks he has left behind him. Tallulah, however, is drawn back home in the wake of her doomed attempts at escape where she finally uncovers the background that led her family to self-destruction.

These days, when so many people are trying to flee from torture at home and move to new promised lands but are thwarted by greedy, unwelcoming governments, THE MYTH OF PERPETUAL SUMMER offers a look into a very American background, a history that needs to be escaped from and yet never loosens its grip on those stuck in its web of horror and anguish. Taking on race, war and the promise of the summer of love, Tallulah's journey offers a distinctive look into the unfulfilled attempts by so many in the 1960s to outrun the sins of their elders. Susan Crandall has fashioned an imaginative and emotionally compelling tale for the ages.