Debut Spotlight: Vanessa Lafaye

Today I'm kicking off the blog tour for Vanessa Lafaye's debut novel Summertime which is published tomorrow with a spotlight feature to introduce you to Vanessa and her book.  Enjoy.

Vanessa Lafaye was born in Tallahassee and raised in Tampa, Florida, where there were hurricanes most years. She first came to the UK in 1987 looking for adventure, and found it. After spells of living in Paris and Oxford, she now lives in Marlborough, Wiltshire, with her husband and three furry children.  Vanessa leads the local community choir, and music and writing are big parts of her life.

Say hello to Vanessa on Facebook or Twitter 

Tensions simmer as a small town, already divided by race, is torn apart by the deadliest of hurricanes.

Florida, 1935. Heron Key is a small town where the relationships are as tangled as the mangrove roots in the swamp. Everyone is preparing for the 4th of July barbecue, unaware that their world is about to change for ever. Missy, the Kincaid family's maid and nanny, feels that she has wasted her life pining for Henry, whom she has not seen since he went to fight on the battlefields of France in WWI. Now he has returned with a group of other desperate, destitute veterans on a government works project, unsure of his future, ashamed of his past. 

When a white woman is found beaten nearly to death in the early hours, suspicion falls on Henry. Old grievances and prejudices threaten to derail the investigation. As the tensions rise, the barometer starts to plummet. The residents think they're ready, and so do the soldiers. They are wrong. Nothing in their experience could prepare them for what is coming. For far out over the Atlantic, the greatest storm ever to strike North America is heading their way... 

Based on real events, Summertime is a stunning debut novel, a glorious love story and a mesmerizing account of survival. It evokes vividly what happens when people in a small community are tested to the absolute limits of their endurance.

If you'd like to know more you can read about why Vanessa wrote Summertime on Scribd here, read the first chapter here or watch the video below of Vanessa introducing Summertime.