WHEN TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD NANTUCKET NATIVE JOSH FLYNN

Arrives home in June, the only thing he's looking forward to is the end of August. Faced with an unpromising summer-late-night calls from his ex-girlfriend, days working for his father at the airport-Josh is losing patience with the island where he grew up. Just as he wonders how he will survive the next three months, Josh meets three women arriving from New York in search of that same answer.

Burdened with two small children, high expectations, and unwieldy emotional baggage, the three women-Brenda, Vicki, and Melanie-tumble onto the airport tarmac and into Josh's life. Brenda has lost her prestigious job as a literature professor after a passionate affair with one of her students; her sister, Vicki, mother of two young boys, has been diagnosed with cancer; and their friend Melanie, after seven failed in-vitro attempts, has recently learned of her husband's affair, only to discover she's pregnant. The three women have escaped to Nantucket with hopes that the magic of summer will heal them, but this does not prove easy.

Seeking help, Brenda hires Josh to babysit boys, and in no time it's hard for the women to imagine their lives without him-he provides Vicki with free time, encourages Brenda's writing, and challenges Melanie to follow her heart. Josh needs them, too, but is he, like the summer, Just a distraction from the daunting and difficult choices that lie ahead? As Vicki, Brenda and Melanie come to depend on each other, will they be able to survive on their own?

A moving story of the power and unpredictability of love, Barefoot is as memorable and bittersweet as the one perfect day of summer.

 

ELIN HILDERBRAND is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa Writers ' Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in Seventeen, the Massachusetts Review, and the Colorado Review. She lives with her husband and their three children on Nantucket , Massachusetts .