The summer place from which Sloan Wilson's novel takes its title is an island off the coast of Maine. On this island one summer, Ken Jorgenson and Sylvia Raymond meet. The story of what happens to them, to the people they marry and to their children, who years later meet on the island, is the central thread of a novel about how marriages are made on earth: some out of fear, some out of pride, some out of desperation, and some, when there is strength and self-knowledge, out of love.