The Summer People

By John Foster West

The Summer People

254 pp., 5 x 7

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-4207-9
    Published: January 1989

Buy this Book

This title is not eligible for UNC Press promotional pricing.

To purchase online via an independent bookstore, visit Bookshop.org

Distributed for Appalachian State University

In the summer of 1974, twenty-four year old Anna DeVoss finds herself widowed and alone in the unfamiliar country of the North Carolina mountains. The body of her husband, a navy pilot missing in action for six years, has just been returned home from Vietnam. Following his funeral her mother in law persuades her to spend some time alone at the family’s summer home in Watauga County, North Carolina, in what becomes a summer of discovery for Anna.

About the Author

John Foster West was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on Dec. 10, 1918. He attended Mars Hill College from 1941 until 1943 when he joined the Army Air Corp. When the war ended in 1945, West returned to school at UNC at Chapel Hill, studying English, where he earned a B.A. in 1947 and an M.A. in 1949. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He taught English and Creative Writing at Elon College, Old Dominion, and Appalachian State University. He retired from ASU in 1991. He is the author of Time Was, Appalachian Dawn, and This Proud Land. He passed away on May 2, 2008, at the age of 89 in Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
For more information about John Foster West, visit the Author Page.