When Summer Comes to an End

By Phil Morrison

Middletown, Indiana. Summer 1960.
Tommy Kelly is nineteen, with a mechanic's hands and a love too big for a small town that has already decided what he's worth. Susan Hayes is nineteen, with notebooks full of questions and a future mapped out by others. They've been in love in secret for two years when Tommy climbs into his sky-blue Chevrolet to race in a stock car event-and prove he deserves what he loves.

He won't come back.

From 1960 to 2023, Susan lives through sixty-three years without ever setting her grief down. She becomes a librarian, shelves books, fills notebooks, leaves flowers beneath an oak tree. She turns down Indianapolis, turns down David, turns down anything that feels like forgetting. Not out of resignation-by choice. Because some loves can't be replaced. They're carried.

When Summer Fades is a novel about the endurance of love after loss, about how an entire life can be built around an absence and still remain, despite everything, a full life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GXMRJ2N6
• ISBN13: 9798235616172
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Phil Morrison
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"