SOURCE: Stewart, Rose Russell. “A Midsummer Romance in 1905.” Blade (19 May 1988): F7.

In the following review, Stewart notes a pleasant sense of nostalgia in Santmyer's posthumous novel Farewell, Summer.

After a long, difficult day of meeting the demands of family, work, and community, how nice it is to settle down to a book that doesn't force my emotions to stretch from one end to another.

Farewell, Summer is a novella that relieves its reader of emotional upheavals by discussing current or historical turmoils. Rather, it amuses with fond childhood memories.

The author so expertly describes the scenery of country life that in some instances it appears the characters are dropped in merely to bring human vibrancy to a relaxed, beautiful, rural setting.

Imagine this: “The water made a rainbow in the sun over the row of cabbages, and you could smell the fresh dampness as far as the summer...