Firefly summer, by Maeve Binchy

Running out of reading material while on vacation (at least of the cheerful variety – I couldn’t face another depressing  book….), I picked this paperback up at the Grand Rapids MN library’s book sale at “Tall Timber Days.”  I had never read anything by her and she had just recently died.  I was taken by her self-depreciating assessment as quoted in the obituary, “I’m mainly an airport author, and if you’re trying to take your mind off the journey, you’re not going to read ‘King Lear,’ ” she told The Irish Times in 2000. “I’ve seen a lot of people buy my books and then fall asleep on the plane soon afterwards.”  Although I found the first 150 or so pages of the book a bit saccharine and slow, I soon was caught up in her storytelling and the tale of an Irish-American businessman coming back to Mountfern, Ireland, the town that his drunken ne'er-do-well father was forced to leave, to buy up and restore the burnt out remains of the mansion belonging to the town’s gentry.  His dream of opening it as a fine hotel has unintended, and sometimes tragic, consequences for the rural townsfolk.  I will consider her work for future plane trips!  662 pp.