When Emalee's parents die tragically she is sent to live with her Aunt Audrey who spends her summers on an idyllic lake in Upstate New York. To cope with her loss, Emalee becomes emotionally detached from everyone around her. As she enters adulthood, Emalee struggles to maintain this façade, especially while trying to navigate relationships with the men in her life: Peter, an artist and close friend who lacks the ambition to make his art known to anyone but himself; and the quiet, intelligent Stuart who she falls in love with, only to get caught up in a bizarre love triangle with his cousin, Danielle. When Danielle is found dead at the bottom of the lake, Emalee suspects Stuart. She heads off to college and doesn’t look back until years later when she she returns to the lake and discovers the truth. Set among the pristine lakes of Upstate New York and the Canadian wilderness, the characters in Ephemeral Summer come to life in vivid landscapes impossible to forget.