Around Again [Hardcover]

Suzanne Strempek Shea (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2001

With her signature talent for fiction that is 'rich with an unusual sweetness' (USA Today) and filled with wry humour, the national bestselling author of Lily of the Valley delivers a moving portrait of a woman confronting her past. "Word of a good deed travels far. Word of a bad deed travels even farther." When Robyn Panek is summoned by her ailing Uncle Pal to operate his pony ring for one final season, her initial reaction is resistance. After all, it has been a long twenty-two years since she's returned to the beloved Massachusetts farm, the idyllic spot where she spent the vacations of her youth. Pulled back by forces even stronger than her memories, Robyn must now try to piece together the events of that final, fateful childhood summer, when a dark mystery and chilling rumours swirled about her former friend Lucy Dragon. Seeking to finally uncover the truth abouth Lucy's strange and sudden vanishing, Robyn's own future begins to seen every bit as uncertain as Uncle Pal's beloved ponies as she braces herself to confront a past from which she ran so long ago, and to come to terms with the life she has since made for herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shea's bestselling Hoopi Shoopi Donna and Lily of the Valley established her as a chronicler of Polish-American life with a wholesome and heartwarming, if sometimes treacly, style. Now she focuses on Robyn Panek, who returns to the Massachusetts farm where she spent childhood summers. Her Uncle Pal, too old and sickly to tend to the farm, asks her to run the pony ring for one last summer before he sells the property. Robyn obliges, and finds herself haunted by memories of betrayal. During her last summer on the farm, 18-year-old Robyn, readying for college in the fall, befriended boarder Lucy Dragon, a disturbed teenager sent by her parents to reap the psychological benefits of living in a rural setting. While Lucy and Robyn became fast friends, roaming the farm and its environs with Robyn's boyfriend, Frankie, the summer ended in heartbreak: a neighbor's baby vanished and Robyn realized that neither Lucy nor Frankie were what they seemed. Now, 22 years later, both Lucy and Frankie resurface to make amends. While die-hard fans will appreciate the folksy touches that capture the charm of a smalltown community stuck in a time warp Frankie works at the Day n' Night Dairy; a set of signs outside Pal's farm advertise "Clover Honey, Brown Eggs... Perfectly Round Rocks, Lucky Horseshoes (Used), Your Name in Cement" Shea's narrative meanders between the present and the past, with the central surprise hinted at so heavily that it is robbed of suspense by the time it is revealed. Without the anchor of a compelling plot, this novel feels like its title a retread of themes explored better in the author's previous books. (July 10)Forecast: Shea's reputation will drive sales of her latest, as will national advertising and an eight-city author tour, but the book will do nothing to build her readership base.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Readers will relate to the ordinary people in this "gentle mystery," the author's fourth book (following Lily of the Valley). Robyn Panek, who spends summers on her Aunt Victory and Uncle Pal's Massachusetts farm, particularly enjoys leading young riders around the pony ring. However, during her 18th summer, something bizarre happened that was never properly explained or resolved. Now, many years later, Victory is no longer alive, Pal is terminally ill, and Robyn has been summoned to operate the pony ring one last season before closing the farm. The return of Lucy Dragon, a boarder who spent one summer on the farm before leaving under strange circumstances, appears to be a complication. However, Lucy has returned to make peace with the people she wronged that summer, and as a result Robyn is now able to face her past and gain some understanding of where her life is heading. A heartwarming story; recommended for all public libraries. Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, MD
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Atria; 1St Edition edition (June 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743403754
• ISBN-13: 978-0743403757
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,041,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars insightful, compassionate view of a woman's hope for rebirth, November 3, 2001

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Around Again (Hardcover)

Accomplished New England author Suzanne Strempek Shea's most recent novel, "Around Again," presents convicing and evocative evidence that of life's most significant battles, the wars we wage inside ourselves are the most important. The novel features a conflicted protagonist, Robyn Panek, who must return to a family farm which, some twenty years earlier, produced a summer that sundered her attachment to an innocent and hopeful past. Priding herself on her ability to discern that which is real from that which is fake, Robyn must confront not only the unfulfilled status of her present life, but also the traumatizing memories of events which shattered not only friendship and romance, but the very idea of family continuity and personal grace.

"Around Again" is a significant departure for the author, whose three previous books possessed an aura of kindness and warmth for the female protagonists whose Polish identity provided nurturing support against life's disappointments. In this talented and provocative novel, Shea depicts a protagonist whose middle-aged existence is one of loneliness, silent anguish, and subdued frustration over past betrayal. Robyn Panek emerges as a fully-rendered character, whose hurt and isolation compel our compassion, whose blasted hopes foster our admiration for her earnest determination to make sense of her past. This is a more somber, sophisticated and adult novel, rich in characterization and deftly presented in a series of cross-cutting chapters which alternate between Robyn as a late adolescent and as a middle-aged woman.

Robyn Panek, responding to her uncle's request to close down his beloved family farm in western Massachusetts after he has suffered a near-fatal illness, learns that life does not work out "neat and clean and tidy." A central metaphor of the novel revolves around the future of a set of ponies, whose backs have carried decades of riders and whose being is central to Robyn's memory of the past and her self-definition today. She must confront the memory of Lucy Dragon, whose suicidal impulses some twenty years ago led to the explosion of all that Robyn held dear. The reflective Robyn comes to realize that "what happens to people between there and here you can never really know."

Suzanne Strempek Shea movingly depicts adolescent friendship through Lucy and Robyn. Reluctantly, slowly, unknowingly, Robyn comes to love Lucy. "The flight and exposition, the self-love and automatic hate...all this shone back at me...So there was no way I could miss or ignore the truth. That looking at this crazy girl, clearly I was also seeing myself." The relationship between Robyn and Frankie, her first love, brims with unabashed optimism; how Robyn deals with its abrupt transformation perhaps is the single strongest aspect of the novel.

This important work, symbolically rich and engrossing in both its narrative and characterizations, signals a new path for its author. Rightfully heralded as a vibrant voice for Polish Americans and a keen interpreter of the mind of young women bordering on self-discovery, Suzanne Strempek Shea now can be perceived as an author whose scope is much, much broader. "Around Again" helps all of us understand what it means to be human.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, November 14, 2001

By 

Reader in NC (eastern NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Around Again (Hardcover)

This was the first book I read by this author. I loved it. It's been a long time since the end of a novel made me cry. I've since read Shea's other books and have enjoyed them very much, but Around Again remains my favorite.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars --Worth reading--, March 22, 2005

By 

Judith Miller (Bluemont, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Around Again (Paperback)

AROUND AGAIN is another original offering by Suzanne Strempek Shea.

After a 22-year hiatus, Robyn Panek returns to the farm in Massachusetts where she had spent her summers as a child and young woman. There, she had assisted her aunt and uncle in running the pony ring on their farm. Those had been the best summers of Robyn's life. She enjoyed the farm, the ponies, the visiting children and the warmth and love that her relatives gave her. She also had Frankie, her boyfriend, who lived and worked nearby. Frankie was the love of her life. That final summer saw the addition of another helper by the name of Lucy Dragon. What happened that last season, so many years ago, changed the course of many lives. Now, Robyn has the chance to clear up the past.

There are parts of this story that will always remain in my mind. This author has the ability to make the ordinary parts of life interesting.