In her sensual new novel, SUMMER PEOPLE, Piercy exchanges her panoramic canvas for a strikingly intimate one, focusing on the lives of three dedicated artists in a small Cape Cod community.

The "scandal" of the relationship between Dinah, Susan, and Willie has long since faded among the locals. Like all the yearrounders in the town where they have lived for ten years, the three tolerate a seasonal migration of summer people - like a cloud of outrageously plumed tropical birds come to chatter, to feed, to mate. For Dinah, an avant-garde composer, the invasion of these part-
time visitors means that her peace will be shattered and her beloved woodlands despoiled. But Willie, a sculptor whose art is unfashionably political, makes his living renovating their cottages. And Susan, Willie's wife, a fabric designer and passionate seeker of high style, eagerly awaits the arrival of summer people - especially Tyrone Burdock, the charming, manipulative financier across the pond-who offer her a warmly inviting world of elegant meals and sensitive conversation. Piercy explores that margin where artists mingle with
their patrons, where class and status bleach to invisibility in the blaze of sun on white sand, where behind the dark glasses, it is hard to tell who is conning and who is conned.