The Last Summer of Ada Bloom

• A beautiful and affecting story about the fragility of family relationships and about the pervading effects of secrets we keep, set in a small Victorian country town. • It is 1980, the year of John Lennon's assassination, and the Bloom family is beginning to unravel. Martha is lost in regret for her past, her husband Mike is yearning for a time when his wife wasn't always so distant, teenagers Tilly and Ben are both coming of age in their own unruly ways, and nine-year-old Ada is holding on to a childhood that is about to be lost to her. • Told from the perspectives of each family member, Martine Murray's impressive adult fiction debut is about a family growing up and growing apart, each of them longing for their own kind of freedom. • Lyrical, sophisticated and immensely captivating, The Last Summer of Ada Bloom is ultimately a story about relationships, what people withhold from each other, and what happens when secrets, present and past, come to light. • For fans of Holly Throsby's Goodwood, Peggy Frew's Hope Farm and Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread • Martine Murray is an award-winning children’s novelist and illustrator. She was born in Melbourne and now lives in Castlemaine, Victoria.