World War I broke out on June 28, 1914, the same day on which Summertime begins. For some time, tensions in Europe had been high, and on that fateful date, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo by a member of the Black Hand Society, a secret Serbian group. The ultimate aim of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary’s southernmost provinces which could then be formed into a new nation.
The “war to end all war” — as World War I was often called — does not play a significant role in Summertime. The United States, in fact, didn’t enter the war until several years later, on April 6, 1917. Yet the tension and sense of world-wide conflict forms an interesting backdrop for this love story. It is, in a sense, a statement about our ability to isolate ourselves, or, more specifically, our ability to focus more on ourselves than on others. Sometimes, like Linn Sparks, we can become so wrapped up in ourselves and our needs that we become almost oblivious to what’s going on around us.
My grandfather and his brother, Mike, both fought in France during the war. The uniformed man pictured above, however, is neither of them. He is a distant family member on my grandmother’s side. His name was August Grotjan, but beyond that, I don’t have a lot of information about him.
For me, in writing Summertime, the knowledge that war was raging in Europe while my characters were going about their lives in a little country town — laughing, loving, living — gave a special poignancy to the story, and in a way became part of a quiet, understated theme. Life is short, and we must make of it what we can.
Summertime 