One Summer (Book 1 of the Roone series)

• Dramatic Rights: Available
• Setting: The island of Roone, with a year-round population of 347, the most westerly of Ireland’s offshore islands, located off the Kerry coast, fourteen nautical miles from the mainland.
• Vibe: Roone is a small close-knit island community, with connections everywhere: pretty much everyone is related to at least three other island families. Unsurprisingly, with no house further than half a mile from it, the sea features largely, supporting fishing families and claiming lives down through the years. There is a magical quality to Roone, with happenings and phenomena that nobody can explain. An apple tree fruits several times a year; a signpost on the cliffs that nobody admits to erecting keeps reappearing every time the local council removes it; visitors to the local cemetery smell oranges or chocolate, with no explanation for either scent; mushrooms in a woman's garden cure arthritis; honey from certain hives puts an end to insomnia. The locals are sanguine about these strange occurrences, accepting that life on Roone is simply different. The island is peaceful over the winter, locals enjoying having the place to themselves, the pace of life slower and fewer ferries to and from the mainland, but it comes alive in the spring and summer months, when tourists flock there for the beaches and the scenery, and a taste of island life.
• Period: December 2011 to December 2012, with the bulk of the action taking place over the summer.

Islander Nell Sullivan, Roone’s only hairdresser, is preparing for her wedding, and wants everyone to attend. Fiancé Tim’s happy to foot the bill – as a computer programmer he can well afford it – but Nell wants to contribute. Tim and Nell had met through Tim’s brother James, who’d relocated to Roone from Dublin a few years previously with his troubled teenage son Andy, following the death of his wife. Nell decides to offer her cottage for rent over the summer to raise funds, and subsequently lets it over six weeks to three lots of tenants, while she moves to the little room off her salon. The lettings lead to unexpected encounters and developments, but along the way Nell’s future plans are thrown into uncertainty.

The death of a much-loved islander unites the community in grief.

Nell’s father Denis meets a woman who causes him to make significant life changes.

An eventful summer draws to a close with a house fire, and Nell ultimately realises that she has a difficult choice to make. The book ends with a wedding, but it’s not Nell’s.

UK Publisher: Hachette