The Summer Country

Maureen Pierce has led a fairly ordinary life, maybe a slightly tough one for a woman her age, growing up on the wrong side of the poverty line in Naskeag Falls, Maine. But everything changes when she meets Brian Albion. If she can believe him, she carries a blood legacy that goes back to the old country. Only this is the really old country, the land of Mordred and Merlin, where deadly battles are still fought with magic, and a woman who carries the blood of the Old Ones is a prize to be desired - or a threat to be destroyed.

"A well-written tale - full of action, adventure, and deceit - with an unusual heroine looking for her rightful place in the world." - Anne Bishop

"You don't find many books like this, never mind first novels. Hetley's The Summer Country is like an old Irish whiskey - dark and smoky, abounding in flavor and detail. For the jaded reader of Celtic fantasies such as I've become, bone-weary of all the pale and limpid novels that try to pass themselves off as the real thing, it's such a treat to find a book as strong as this. The Summer Country is all the things a good novel should be: a tightly-written, resonant, single-volume story rich with flawed characters, dark visions, and quiet joys, with a whisper of true mystery, lying there in wait at the very heart of it all." - Charles de Lint

"A wonderful debut novel, by turns beautiful and utterly brutal. There's nothing soft and fuzzy about this fantasy land. Hetley gives us a raw, gritty world of hard edges and merciless determination, peopled by characters who live and strive with complete veracity regardless of which side of the mystical veil they hail from. His mix of 'real world' elements with the Celtic mythos is a delight." - Lynn Flewelling