Summerlost

Summerlost (2016), Ally Condie’s tenth book for young adults, was a finalist for the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery.

Cedar Lee is a young girl struggling to come to terms with the deaths of her father and younger brother in a car accident. Cedar, her surviving brother, Miles, and their mother go to their mother’s house at Iron Point. Cedar’s mother bought the house with the intent of fixing it up to rent out during the school year when she is working.

One day, while out on a walk, Cedar sees a strange boy riding a bike. The boy is dressed in old fashioned clothes. Though he looks happy and carefree, Cedar is sad for him because he is strange and doesn’t even seem to know it. She is careful not to judge the boy, though, because she remembers how hurtful it was when people would judge her brother and call him names.



Uncle Nick arrives to visit the house. He brings Cedar a bike as a present, and Cedar goes out for a ride. She follows the boy on a bike to the college campus and sees that he is preparing to take part in the Summerlost Shakespeare Festival. Cedar’s family has a history with the festival, as her father used to act in performances.

The boy introduces himself to Cedar as Leo Bishop. He works at the festival, and Cedar realizes she wants to work there as well. Leo brings her to his boss, Gary, who allows Cedar to start immediately. Cedar learns that the current theater is going to be torn down at the end of the season and a new one built nearby. This makes her sad because she knows the new theater cannot have the same place in her heart.

Leo is an imaginative boy, which Cedar appreciates because it distracts her from her own thoughts. The two children launch a guided tour of sites around town that were significant in the life of Lisette Chamberlain, a local movie star who died twenty years previous. The tours are a secret, and a way to earn extra money for Leo to finance his dream vacation to England. However, when Gary finds out about the tours, he fires both Leo and Cedar from their jobs at Summerlost.



Though they no longer work at the theater, both of the children are obsessed with gaining access to the underground tunnels, where it is said that Lisette’s ghost resides. They also want to find a ring that belonged to Lisette that supposedly went missing in the theater.

Meanwhile, Cedar begins to find things on the windowsill in her room that remind her of her dead brother. Her brother was autistic and had an affinity for certain kinds of items, often making unusual collections. As the items pile up, seemingly without explanation, Cedar wonders if it is the ghost of her brother or of Lisette leaving them for her.

Eventually, Miles reveals that he has been leaving the items in Cedar’s room. He knows that Cedar would understand the significance of them and why they are important. He admits that he likes having a way to remember their brother without having to explain everything he is feeling.



Cedar continues to volunteer in the costume department at Summerfell, since her supervisor, Meg, is not angry about the tours. While working, Cedar finds Lisette’s ring in one of the boxes of props. She initially takes the ring home, thinking that her brother would have liked it, but then brings it back, confessing the theft to Meg.

Meg was a friend of Lisette’s and she understands Cedar’s need to be part of the mystery. The two go for a walk and talk about the death of Cedar’s family. Cedar asks if she and Leo can see the tunnels, mostly because it is Leo’s dream. Meg agrees, telling the two of them to come back at night.

That night, Cedar and Leo enter the tunnels. They don’t see any ghosts, but the ritual gives Cedar a chance to say goodbye to her dead loved ones. Cedar returns home and confesses that she snuck out, but her mother seems to understand that it was something she needed to do. The two pick up the yard and pack up the house in preparation to leave Iron Point for the year.



In an epilogue, it is revealed that Leo’s parents give him the rest of the money he needs for his England trip. He goes with his father in an attempt to explain why he is so drawn to the theater. Cedar and her family receive letters from people who received their relatives’ organs, and Cedar is happy that her family lives on in this way.