Robin Gaines

Invincible Summers follows Claudia Goodwin through eleven summers, from the age of six through twenty-three, as she adjusts with varying degrees of success to what it means to be a daughter, a sister, friend, and lover in a world of loss, betrayal and bad judgment. Set in a middle class suburb outside of Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, the novel show's Claudia's pursuit to find a purpose as she struggles with feelings of rootlessness in a world torn apart by assassinations, riots, and the Vietnam War. It is a coming-of-age story of one woman's journey through the guilt and responsibility she feels for her father's death, her mother's career-altering disfiguration, and her brother's downslide into drugs and alcohol. Invincible Summers weaves a tale about grief and forgiveness and the indelible heartbreak of all the things left unsaid.