BUMMER CAMP

A woman is pulled back to her childhood home, a Wisconsin summer camp, when financial woes threaten to derail it.

Cat McCarthy, 37, has spent two decades trying to create boundaries between herself and others; having grown up at a ramshackle theater camp and been responsible for her little sister and the other campers, she can’t handle the thought of letting anyone down, so she’s erected a protective shell and sailed through life alone. But when she unexpectedly gets pregnant on a second date, she’s delighted about the baby that will be arriving and expanding her circle to two[. Then, when she’s seven months along, her sister, Ginger, and nephew, Bard, text her—separately—saying they need help and asking her to come home. Their parents had taken a year off, leaving Ginger and Bard in charge, but Ginger had outsourced the responsibility to Bob, a shady motivational speaker she’s infatuated with, and his wife, Elaine, and the camp’s finances are a mess. Then Bob and Elaine disappear—apparently with all the camp’s money. What follows is a whirlwind week as Cat tries to get ready for the camp’s upcoming fundraising gala and figure out how to help her family and the camp’s staff—including Gary, a groundskeeper she finds distractingly attractive. Disentangling the financial mess at a remote location without phones or internet—Bob locked up everyone’s cell phones for a “media detox program,” and he seems to have cut the wires on the landline—is tricky for Cat, especially while heavily pregnant and with the gala looming. Invitations have been sent but no supplies ordered, and there is no way to cancel the event. This is a slow-moving, optimistic tale that still has a sense of urgency; it leans toward celebrating people’s differences while looking at their quirks as individual traits rather than abject failures.

A sweet novel that combines a little love story and a lot of sisterly bonding set in the beautiful Wisconsin woods.