FROM THE WINNER OF THE 2024 THOMAS E. KENNEDY NOVEL AWARD

A new Nine Lives Edition with a new preface by the author!

Summer of ’85 is the story of an old summer love and a modern tragedy: part coming-of-age story, part mid-life crisis story, and a timely tale for our era.

In the summer of 1985 at the Jersey Shore, Cara Cassaday was Dan Fehr’s first love. Since then, Dan has endured a series of mismatched relationships and unfulfilled dreams. Now his second marriage is in trouble and he’s stuck writing for a mid-size newspaper in a small city. When he learns that Cara is among the victims of a gun massacre in a Philly hoagie shop, it triggers a chain of emotionally charged reactions as he confronts the realization of a lost love and a life lost: Cara was The One.

This is an intimate look at the long arm of tragedy, unfulfilled promise, and the tensions of our times.

Finalist for an American Fiction Award

Distinguished Favorite for the NYC Big Book Award

Winner of the Seven Hills Review Novel Excerpt Contest

Author: Richard Fellinger
Paperback: 242 pages, 2026
ISBN: 9781972482285

Richard Fellinger is an award-winning author, former journalist, and longtime college writing instructor. He’s the author of the novels Summer of ’85 and Made To Break Your Heart and the story collection They Hover Over Us, Winner of the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award, he’s also a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Flash Fiction Contest at Red Cedar Review. He lives with his wife in Harrisburg, PA. Fellinger is the winner of the 2024 Thomas E. Kennedy Novel Award for his novel An American Girl. 

“A cleverly imagined and well-orchestrated novel”–Nancy McKinley, author of St. Christopher on Pluto

“Summer of ’85 dazzles us with the humanity of a passionate and sensitive man who acts on his feelings with little notion of the consequence and leaves us wondering if we should be more inclined to act in the same way.”–Willard Cook, publisher of Epiphany Literary Journal