Spencer’s tale is light summer fare> ‘Camden Summer’ has palatable sweetness

THAT CAMDEN SUMMER, by LaVyrle Spencer, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 368 pages, $23.95

After 18 years away, newly divorced Roberta Jewett returns to Camden, Maine, with her three daughters. The year is 1916, Camden has moved into the 20th century, automobiles roll along the roads. But attitudes in Camden remain unchanged; a divorced woman is no better than a prostitute. Roberta moves her family into a ramshackle house and Gabriel Farley is hired to renovate it.

Gabe Farley is a widower of seven years; he is raising a daughter close in age to Roberta’s girls. At first, Roberta and Gabe clash. He sniggers behind her back about her marital status, something he soon regrets and quickly adjusts. Besides, Roberta is full of spirit and won’t be cowed by a mere man who never heard of Longfellow’s poem “Hiawatha.”

Roberta’s mother, Gabe’s mother, Roberta’s sister, and just about all the other women in town are mean to Roberta. How she ever got the job as county nurse is hard to understand. But in spite of what anyone thinks or says, Roberta buys an automobile, learns to drive it, and goes about her appointed rounds giving diphtheria inoculations and tend to measles patients.

Then, on a back-country road, Roberta is raped by her sister’s husband, Elfred. Word of the rape gets out after Gabe beats up Elfred (Camden has a party line, that great technological aid to the habitual gossip) and the mean women of Camden get meaner. They start a movement to have the state remove Roberta’s daughters from her home.

Roberta’s only friend in all this is the taciturn, unable-to-express-his-emotions-easily Gabe. His solution to Roberta’s problem (after beating up Elfred) is to propose marriage so Roberta will have someone to protect her from the mean women. Roberta refuses because she has to prove that just because she’s divorced, she’s not a bad woman.

“That Camden Summer” is a fluffy meringue of a book — it looks pretty substantial on the outside with its beautiful robin’s egg blue binding and lovely cream-colored pages. But the minute you bite into it, you discover it’s all air and sticky sweetness. Some of the sweetness is palatable; for example, Roberta’s daughters are bright, burst into poetry and song spontaneously, write and produce plays on their front porch, and love their mother and one another; their teen-age innocence and carefree ways are charming.

“That Camden Summer” is the perfect lightweight book for a lazy afternoon in the hammock when you’re not interested in anything more substantial to chew on.

LaVyrle Spencer is the author of 20 best-selling novels. She lives and writes in Minnesota.

Ardeanna Hamlin is a free-lance writer who lives in Hampden.