Summer is just a teenager, but sometimes she feels like the parent

Fifteen-year-old Summer McIntyre lives with her mother, Oriole, and seven-year-old sister, Sparrow, in a trailer in Alvarro Bay City, overlooking the Pacific. Oriole is a Northern California flower child who fantasizes about being at one with nature and forgets about needing money. Even though she's only fifteen, Summer is good at being Mom.

That is, until Oriole's new boyfriend upsets the precarious balance in their lives. Suddenly Summer has to protect her family as she copes with the dangers of drug-smuggling, blackmailing, and even terrorism.

Set during the 1980s, The Birds of Summer is the story of a teenager with the responsibilities of adulthood thrust upon her shoulders, who learns how to adapt . . . and how to survive. Winner of the PEN Literary Award and the Parents' Choice Award.

This ebook features an extended biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder.