Vicki Delany: Deadly Director’s Cut
This is the second book in Delany’s series set in the Catskills in the 50’s. While the Catskill resorts that served so many families back in the 50’s and beyond are now gone – even the great Grossinger’s is a ghostly version of itself – Delany nevertheless manages to make the area come alive for the reader. She doesn’t dip into the pure historical novel category. Instead, she provides period details that set the reader where she wants them to be, and she somehow manages to invoke the feel and atmosphere of a very specific place and time. The fact that a Canadian writer who, I am thinking, did not spend her childhood summers in the Catskills, is able to do this with such virtuosity is one of those mysteries of the writer’s art. The time period is close enough that with a little bit of yearning and nostalgia you are right back there with her.