The summer of 1938 is idyllic for fourteen-year-old Dorothy
Ann Reid. She’s spent every summer of her life visiting her grandparent’s home
on the banks of the St. Clair River in Algonac, Michigan. But unbeknownst to
her, this will be her last. As Dorothy and her family pass their time swimming,
fishing, and boating, they are blissfully unaware that tragedy lurks just
around the corner.
Last Summer in Algonac is a fictionalized account of the author’s grandmother
and her family’s final summer before her father’s suicide, which altered their
lives forever. Inspired by real people and events, Laurisa Reyes has woven
threads of truth with imagination, creating a “what if” tale. No one living
today knows the details leading to Bertram Reid’s death, but thanks to decades
of letters, personal interviews, historical research, and a visit to Algonac,
Reyes attempts to resolve unanswered questions, and provide solace and closure
to the Reid family at last.
That last
summer in Algonac, there was little water play for Father, who was now
fifty-seven. Alberta, who had married less than two years earlier and had
recently given birth to her first child, had opted to stay in Cleveland. She
and Charles had been my grandest playmates while I was growing up, but now they
both had new adult lives and families of their own. Even Charles, who was
eleven years my senior (Alberta fourteen years), would prove too occupied with his
wife Alice and their baby to venture into any games with me. I supposed Father
might have played that role with me when I was young, but I was thirteen now,
practically a woman, and neither he nor I dared suggest something so childish
as to jump into the river for a splash—except for that one last wonderful
afternoon.
Looking back, I
wish that I had done it every day—that I had taken his hand and walked with him
along the bank under the trees, or sat in the grass and taken off our shoes,
letting our feet dangle in the chilled, meandering water. I wish that I had had
the courage to ask him more about that old rowboat, whether he had ever taken
it all the way across the river to Ontario, Canada, where he and his family had
come from originally. I would have liked to have been in that boat with him
rowing, his muscles taut under his shirt, his sleeves rolled to the elbow.
We wouldn’t
have talked much. Father was a man of few words. But I would have listened to
the ripples of the St. Clair lapping against the boat, the gentle cut of the
oars through the water, the calls of birds overhead. It would have been enough
just to be with him, to see his face turned to the sun, the light glinting off
his spectacles, and to have seen traces of a smile on his lips.
1939, the year
Father died, was a big year for America. It was the year the World’s
Fair opened in New York, and the first shots of World War II were fired in
Poland. The Wizard of Oz premiered at Groman’s
Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, and Lou Gehrig gave his final speech
in Yankee Stadium. Theodore Roosevelt had his head dedicated on Mt. Rushmore,
and John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. All in all, it was a monumental year,
one I would have liked to have shared with my father. He did live long enough
for Amelia Earhart to be officially declared dead after she disappeared over
the Atlantic nearly two years earlier, but otherwise, he missed the rest of it.
No child should
have to mourn a parent. And if she does, at least things about it should be
clear. Unanswered questions that plague one for the rest of one’s
life shouldn’t be part of the picture.
Death is
normally simple, isn’t it? Someone has a heart attack,
or dies in a car accident, or passes away in their sleep from old age. Everyone
expects to die sometime, and they wonder how it will happen and why. And when
it does, as sad as it is for those left behind, the wonder is laid to rest.
Most of the
time.
1939 was a
blur. I’d prefer to forget it, quite frankly. But 1938 was worth
remembering, especially that summer we spent in Algonac with Grandmother Reid
and the family. As long as I could remember, we’d spent every summer on the
banks of the St. Clair. As it turned out, it would be my final summer in
Algonac. Our last summer together. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, and
I’m glad. If I could have seen seven months into the future, if I had known
then how the world as I knew it would all come crashing down, it would have
spoiled everything.
Laurisa White Reyes is
the author of twenty-one books, including the SCBWI Spark Award-winning
novel The Storytellers and the Spark Honor recipient Petals.
She is also the Senior Editor at Skyrocket Press and an English instructor at
College of the Canyons in Southern California. Her next release, a non-fiction
book on the Old Testament, will be released in August 2026 with Cedar Fort
Publishing.
