![]() ![]() ![]() I recognize my brothers and friends in it, which makes it all the more frightening. I grew up in the 1960s in a small Midwestern town where I attended school in a turn-of-the-century building, and except for the evil haunting the town, Summer of Night reminds me of my own childhood. ![]() And although Simmons identifies himself and his brother as the models for two of the main characters, brothers Dale and Lawrence Stewart seem to also owe a debt to Douglas and Tom Spaulding of Dandelion Wine. Simmons’s Elm Haven bears more than a passing resemblance to Bradbury’s fictional Green Town, Ill. Dan Simmon’s younger brother Wayne, friend Kevin, and the author, circa 1960Ĭervantes reminds us that comparisons are odious, but I mean it as a compliment when I say this book is a combination of Ray Bradbury and Steven King, with just a little H.P. If it weren’t for the curses, undead demons and flaming trucks chasing them it would have been an idyllic summer for this group of adolescent friends. But at the same time it manages to be a wonderfully nostalgic story of boyhood and summer. Summer of Night, published in 1991, by Dan Simmons is a genuinely scary book. It turns out that this was true in Elm Haven, Ill., in1960. ![]() Every boy is pretty sure that his school is next door to hell and that his teachers are in league with the forces of darkness. ![]()
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