Fiona Kidman Knihy

A powerful collection of stories exploring love and longing from the award-winning author of This Mortal Boy. Two mothers fight over who will wear a hat on their children's wedding day. A needle is lost somewhere in a woman's body. A writer waits with a suitcase for a man who never comes. This collection brings together Fiona Kidman's finest and most scandalous stories, vividly depicting the joys of female desire and the pain of heartbreak, the thrill of illicit liaisons and the twists and turns of unconventional love. Sometimes joyful, often devastating and always beautiful, All the Way to Summer is a searing account of love and loss from a pioneering feminist icon.

1943. Violet Trench crosses Lake Rotorua with a small boy, but rows back without him. Sixty years later, a boat is ritually set alight on the same body of water. The intervening years see Violet open a café by the lake – the scene of an event in the summer of 1963 with lasting repercussions for Violet and her young employees. Their lives diverge, but Violet’s influence on them all – and on runaway Jessie Sandle in particular – will linger like the scent of the truffles with which she infuses her dishes. The experience of working for Violet Trench in her small-town cafe in the summer of 1963 shapes the lives of a group of women including Jessie Sandal, who follows Violet's influence as far as Cambodia. Fiona Kidman explores family relationships and the difficult journey to female independence.