Choices and Secrets: Summer of Love by Kerri Maher
BY LEE ANN ECKHARDT SMITH
California history, addiction and recovery, winemaking and the hippie culture of the 1960s are all part of Kerri Maher’s latest, complex novel, Summer of Love (Berkley, July 2026). For the author, this meant a combination of lived experience and in-depth research. “I was born and raised in California by California native parents who met at UC Berkeley in the 1960s,” she explains, “so I grew up hearing stories about that mythical time and place. Then I attended Cal myself in the ’90s, when the ’60s were still very much alive and well on campus. Because of this combined lived experience, much of the historical backdrop was already inside of me; I just had to look up a few things and fact-check others.”
It was wine-making and the specific history of Napa that she had to learn the most about. She describes her research experience this way: “While I enjoyed learning about the art and science of creating the perfect bottle, I really geeked out on the history, which began with the Spanish missionaries and evolved through the region’s time as part of Mexico, then the United States.”
Like her previous books, this one presents strong, female main characters. However, unlike most of her other works, these are all fictional characters. Maher has already realized that she enjoys writing both types of historical fiction, as they each have rewards and challenges. She provides these insights into her writing process: “When I’m writing about real people,” she explains, “my research tells me so much about them, whereas with entirely fictional characters, I have to get to know my characters through meta writing and multiple drafts. There’s more freedom when I’m writing more fiction than history, but sometimes that freedom makes me feel lost; when I don’t have the historical record to look at for a major event in the character’s life, I have to do a lot of thinking and journaling and walking to figure out the event.” She confirms, “It feels great when I figure things out!”
author photo by Peter Su
This book explores several characters’ struggles with addiction and recovery. For this, Maher drew from personal experience as well as the experiences of several women who inspired her to “be brave enough to write this novel.” What was important to the author was to portray the realities, rather than the misrepresentations she’s read in other fictional accounts of addiction. Maher knows that no path to recovery is the same, nor is it the defining characteristic of a person. “Addiction,” she declares, “is just one experience among many in a life, and not using anymore is just the beginning of the recovery journey, which I wanted to explore as a joyful process of self-discovery. That’s how it’s been for me, and how it’s been for so many of the sober people I’ve met along the way. Since sobriety is synonymous with self-discovery, it’s impossible for two journeys to look the same.”
The author expects her own life journey will include leaving the east coast of the United States, where she’s lived for more than three decades, and returning to California. “And I’m certainly not done exploring or writing about the state,” she affirms. “I imagine my return after so long will give me a whole new perspective. California is so huge and varied, it’s more than I could ever tackle in one lifetime.”
As for future novels, she reveals that she enjoyed writing the fantasy element that formed part of Summer of Love so much that the new novel she is working on “involves a magical Book of Hours and an epic love story.” She adds, “That’s all I can say right now!”
About the contributor: Lee Ann Eckhardt Smith’s passion for history and storytelling has driven her writing career. She is the author of two acclaimed non-fiction history books: Strength Within: the Granger Chronicles (Baico, 2005) and Muskoka’s Main Street: 150 Years of Courage and Adventure Along the Muskoka Colonization Road (Muskoka Books, 2012). She’s written articles for many magazines and newspapers, primarily about how to write family history and memoir. She is currently working on her fourth collection of photographs and poetry, inspired by the beauty she finds in her everyday world. Find out more at her website.
