Life After Betty: Summer of Summers

Essie Summers--my favorite of all the non-Betty Harlequin authors. To your left is most of my stash, hoarded one and two at a time almost exclusively from Goodwill. Most can be collected from Amazon but since she isn't reprinted (like our Dear Betty is) almost all the copies are used and some are coveted. Here's her wiki info:

Ethel Snelson Summers was born on on July 24, 1912 to a newly-emigrated couple, Ethel Snelson and Edwin Summers, situated in Bordesley Street in Christchurch, Essie was always proud of both her British heritage and her New Zealand citizenship. Both her parents were exceptional storytellers, and this, combined with her early introduction to the Anne of Green Gables stories, engendered in her a life-long fascination with the craft of writing and the colorful legacy of pioneers everywhere.

Leaving school at 14 when her father's butcher shop experienced financial difficulties, she worked for a number of years in draper's shops and later turned her experiences to good use in writing the romantic novels for which she became famous.

She met her husband-to-be William Flett when she was only 13 years old, but it was 13 years before she consented to marry him. A minister's wife and the mother of two, William and Elizabeth, she yet found many opportunities to pen short stories, poetry and newspaper columns before embarking on her first novel, which sold to the firm of Mills & Boon in 1956. Summers died in August 27, 1998.

She wrote more than 56 novels and I own something like 30 (give or take). I'll do a couple of posts on Essie in the next little while so won't review any just now but as a way of introduction, here's how she compares to Neels:

• She's not as intentionally funny as La Neels but has many light-hearted threads. I'd also say she also delves deeper emotionally.

• Betty occasionally acknowledges that Brighton exists, makes it clear her heroines (all but one-ish!) aren't into that sort of thing and then avoids the entire subject. Summers novels are not only more (for lack of a better word) earthy (she does give you some serious kissing to work with), they are also more explicitly willing to discuss the existential threat of Brighton while also being unwilling to ever go there (for the man and the woman--no double standards! Calloo, callay!). Plot points will more often involve personal struggles to avoid moral pitfalls--and not in that fake mid-80s Harlequin heavy-petting way. If an Essie heroine has accidentally developed a tendre for a married man it happens on the first page and she's leaving town on the second, a more suitable hero will be met thereafter.
  

• But they don't strike me as all that preachy. If you're reading Neels as a haven from Brighton then this won't bug you at all about Summers.

• Essie's books almost always revolve around THE MISUNDERSTANDING--often about names or identities or ambiguous communications. It took me reading a few of these before I began to get her pacing and learned to put the right weight on certain plot devices--much in the same way that I had to learn that death in a Neels was worth two pages at the very most and then we'd skip merrily away...

• She's much more poetic than Neels (which I just adore but get that it's just not for everyone) and describes New Zealand so well that she was offered The Order of the British Empire for contributions to NZ tourism.

• Her heroes are never doctors (or clergy even though Essie's husband was a Presbyterian minister). They are sheep farmers, engineers, writers or drapers (department store owners/managers). So it's kind of nice to get a diverse group there.
  

• Summers does a better job at supporting characters than Neels. Often her books will give you a couple of threads, some with kids (fun-to-read-about kids not the dreary other kind), another love story...

In conclusion, Gentle Bettys, Essie Summers is such a fun writer. She's not as consistent as Betty but, while her lows are lower, her highs are higher.

To be continued...