Summers at the Saint

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 21

Chapters 22-41

Chapters 42-56

Chapter 57-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Consequences of Greed and Betrayal

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape, child death, anti-gay bias, and death.

Most of the harmful events that happen at the Saint, including secrets and betrayal, are the consequence of greed. The wish to enrich oneself or fulfill an illicit sexual desire is behind most of the crimes and tragedies, past and present, that are exposed in the course of the book. In many instances, greed spurs a betrayal that has its own further consequences, often for ill.

Sexual covetousness is a subset of greed in the novel. Fred Eddings’s sexual assault of Shannon relies on his social standing and economic power. Yet, after he coerced her into having sex with him, Fred attempted to cover for his crime by calling Shannon a “gold-digger” (331), portraying himself as the target of her greed when he asked Andy Plankenhorn to draw up a contract to relieve Fred of responsibility for Shannon’s rape or her child. The consequence was that Shannon struggled, isolated as a single mother, and that Livvy grew up not knowing who her father was. Similarly, Ric’s vanity and love of attention, both as a young man and as an adult, led him into extramarital sexual relationships with bitter consequences. His attempt to bribe Hudson with peanut candy to keep Ric and Kasey’s affair secret led inadvertently to the boy’s death, presumably from a peanut allergy. Ric’s later marital infidelity causes Madelyn’s to get revenge by stealing from the family business and having affairs of her own. In each case, greedy behavior echoes and amplifies in the people affected.

Greed for financial stability is behind Charlie Burrough’s efforts to siphon money from the Saint. He surreptitiously replaces quality purchases and room furnishings with inferior goods in the pro shop, the restaurant, and the hotel rooms. Charlie’s greed comes from his own poor decision-making: His thefts are meant to make up for poor financial decisions around real estate. Conversely, Ric’s money-based greed has a pettier motivation. Ric is already wealthy, so his scheme to cut Traci out of the Eddings estate by forcing his father to alter his will is simply vindictive. Differences between the Saints and the Ain’ts persist even in the novel’s antagonists: While Garrett and Charlie are trying to achieve financial security, Ric merely feels entitled to having everything and will cheat to get it.

The novel offers a feel-good ending that punishes greed and repairs its consequences. Charlie is punished severely, dying in a car crash while escaping the police. Garrett and Madelyn end up in prison. Fred’s betrayal is set right when his revised will inadvertently makes Livvy, his secret child, heir to his estate. Ric suffers the most, arguably, as Madelyn’s actions directly cause the death of his daughter. The novel creates the fantasy that payment for one’s bad behavior always comes due; in the world of the novel, greed always has a terrible price.

The Obligation to Preserve Family Legacy

Tradition is a strong theme of the novel, emerging naturally out of the subject of a family business being passed down and the status of the Saint as an institution in its Georgia town. As the Eddings family tries to preserve what they consider their heritage, the novel examines the impacts of cultural and economic change on such landmarks and asks which parts of a heritage ought to be preserved and which need to be transcended.

Traci’s efforts to keep the Saint profitable are driven by her attachment to her husband. As a young bride, to please Hoke, she adopted his preferences as the hotel’s owner, including nightly tours of the property, a combination of inspection and survey of pride. Just as she preserves the décor his mother added to the cottage that they inherited as their marital home, Traci continues this daily tour out of love and grief for Hoke. Maintaining the Saint preserves something he cared for; the income from the hotel is only a secondary benefit.

Traci uses this mixture of sentiment and pragmatism to encourage Parrish to defer her travel plans to work at the hotel. Traci tells Ric that Parrish is “keenly aware that this business is in her heritage, and she wants to make sure the Saint survives so that her generation of the family can continue to run it” (43). This is a bit of manipulation: Parrish feels an obligation to her aunt more than to the hotel, so Traci is actually obliquely accusing Ric of being more interested in profits than in preservation. Not only is Traci more dedicated than Ric to preserving the Saint as a gracious refuge and destination, but she also is more dedicated than Ric to the Eddings family. Traci, not Ric, is present when Fred dies, suggesting that Traci has a deeper emotional attachment to the legacy.

Madelyn views Traci’s sentimentality as clinging to outdated tradition, suggesting that Traci is holding on to an ideal of the past. Madelyn’s opinions, however, must be read in light of her embezzling: Ordering new décor provides Madelyn with an opportunity to skim more profits. Breaking with tradition, for Madelyn, is simply a financial opportunity.

In the end, Traci reconciles an appreciation for the past with the new challenges of the present. She finds new love with Whelan but convinces Whelan to work at the hotel, making him, too, part of the Eddings heritage. Ironically, it is Livvy—also raised as an Ain’t—who inherits the legacy of the hotel; eventually, she will make decisions about which traditions to continue, like sunsets on the patio. At the same time, Felice’s success as the chef shows that enlivening the menu doesn’t mean completely getting rid of guest favorites like grits. The novel suggests that tradition can make way for the new to answer changing needs, times, and demographics—but that some elements of history provide authenticity and comfort.

The Burden of Secrets and Grief

Grief and loss are throughlines of the novel; however, grief in the novel is often the result of keeping secrets. Andrews posits that this kind of grief only heals when secrets are exposed and addressed.

Some losses are experienced openly. Traci is a widow who describes her feelings of loss as “endless, relentless waves that roll[] over her at the most unexpected times, and every day threaten[s] to submerge her back into the darkness of that first, unbearable year after the plane crash” (62). She has not yet fully internalized her new reality: For instance, she often wakes up and doesn’t remember that Hoke is gone. Although Traci also cares for Parrish, grief doesn’t present in the same way after Parrish’s death. Traci more readily addresses the needs of the hotel, the investigation into Parrish’s murder, and her relationship with Whelan. Possibly, Traci has less space to mourn Parrish openly because she knows Ric blames her for bringing Parrish to work in the hotel. His anger forces Traci into action: When he doesn’t invite her to the funeral, Traci has to sneak in and sit in the back rather than being acknowledged as a grieving family member.

The burden of secrets can carry the same weight as grief. Shannon’s inability to share the story of her sexual assault—both because is determined not to identify herself as a victim and because Fred legally prevents her from doing so—forces her to raise and provide for Livvy as a single mother. The process changes her from a carefree, rather rebellious young woman into a disciplined, tidy, rule-adhering adult, in part to transform the person whom Fred assaulted into someone who cannot be taken advantage of in the same way. However, her secret results in direct grief for Ric when Madelyn acts to eliminate the rival heir and accidentally engineers Parrish’s murder.

Secrets can also be used to manipulate. Kasey’s decline after the death of her son, Hudson, is partly due to her husband Brad’s secret betrayal resulting from Kasey’s infidelity. Brad learned the true cause of Hudson’s death—anaphylactic shock, not drowning—and benefited from a financial settlement that he did not share with Kasey. The grief and guilt that Kasey endured because she always believed that she had not sufficiently protected Hudson in the pool led to her early death. Similarly, KJ’s secrets expose him to the machinations of the novel’s antagonists. KJ is an unwilling participant in the scheme to embezzle money from the hotel, but he is vulnerable to extortion because of his fear of coming out to his family as gay, which Marcie and Garrett use against him.

While it takes time to heal from the grief of loss, the exposure of secrets, as demonstrated in the investigations that discover the cause of Hudson’s death and Livvy’s parentage, means that the pain of those events can at last be addressed and, in some respects, remedied.