A fan-favourite character returns in Carley Fortune's One Golden Summer
The Toronto-based novelist discussed her novel One Golden Summer on Bookends with Mattea Roach
Carley Fortune never imagined that one summer story would rewrite her entire life. After more than a decade in journalism, she took a leap of faith, leaving behind the newsroom to pursue her long-held dream of becoming a novelist.
That leap of faith led to the breakout success of her debut romance, Every Summer After, a story that not only captured readers' hearts but also catapulted Fortune into literary stardom.
Set over six years and one emotionally charged weekend, Every Summer After followed Percy and Sam, two childhood friends whose close bond was shattered by a fateful moment that forced them apart — and the complicated love story that unfolds when they're reunited years later at a funeral.
But fans didn't just fall in love with Percy and Sam — they wanted more. Specifically, they wanted a happy ending for Charlie Florek, Sam's charismatic and fun-loving brother, who quickly became a fan-favourite side character.
Fortune soon found herself inundated with messages online and requests at book events, all urging her to give Charlie his own story.
"It's so flattering that people feel so connected to these characters," Fortune said on Bookends with Mattea Roach.
Now, she's answering that call with her much-anticipated follow-up novel, One Golden Summer, giving Charlie his long-awaited chance at love. The story follows Alice, a photographer seeking a quiet, restorative summer at her childhood cottage with her grandmother.
But her plans for peace are upended when Charlie — charming, flirtatious, and impossible to ignore — unexpectedly reappears. Soon, Alice finds herself feeling like she's 17 again, questioning whether this summer might hold something more than she ever expected.
Fortune is a Toronto-based writer and journalist who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. Her previous books are Every Summer After, This Summer Will Be Different and Meet Me at the Lake, which was a contender for Canada Reads 2024, championed by Mirian Njoh.
She joined Roach on Bookends to discuss the process of crafting One Golden Summer and the far-reaching impact of her books — stories that have brought picturesque Canadian settings like Barry's Bay, Ont., and P.E.I., to readers around the world.
Mattea Roach: After writing Every Summer After, you felt that you wanted to say more about [Charlie]. What kind of a character is he? Why is he so fascinating?
Carley Fortune: In Every Summer After, he is kind of an antagonist. He likes to provoke people.
On the exterior, he's kind of arrogant. He's a flirt. He's a lot of fun. But the thing about people who can provoke you is that they really see you. They're great observers of other people. If you can get a rise out of somebody, it's because you know what makes them tick.
I also felt that he has a really big heart. He lost his father when he was a young teenager, and that left him with some damage and some coping mechanisms.
There's a hint of that in Every Summer After, but I thought about him a lot and how to go deeper with him and especially because a lot of people did not like Charlie after reading Every Summer After.
Why did you craft Alice as this artistic person who is experiencing some difficulty in her relationship with her job as the person that Charlie was going to fall in love with?
I ran The Bachelor for Charlie. I created, I think, 18 characters with different names, jobs, personality types, different ways that they may have encountered Charlie before or not, what their dynamic would be like.
I thought about this photographer, and she had this photo that she took that summer that she was at the cottage when she was 17.
It all started to fall into place because what I loved about that — she took this photo of three teenagers in a yellow boat who are Charlie, Sam and Percy from Every Summer After— [is that] she never spoke to those kids, but she wanted to, she was watching them from afar.
That made Alice a stand-in for the readers of Every Summer After, who spent that book watching those three characters from afar. That's really how photography came into play.
You've always set your books very specifically in Canada, from Ontario cottage country to P.E.I. I'm curious what it means for you to have people from around the world reading about this very specific Canadian summer experience, and in some cases, maybe wanting to visit.
When I was in Brazil in the fall and I was speaking to a room of journalists and book influencers, it struck me sitting there just how far Barry's Bay had gone because Every Summer After, is so beloved there.
People have travelled to Barry's Bay, which is so cool. I met a couple in New York who had driven nine hours to spend the weekend in Barry's Bay.
I've seen a lot of people mentioned that they're going to, or they have gone to Prince Edward Island, where my third book is set. It means so much to me to bring this beautiful country to the world.
What's your relationship like with cottaging and with the summer?
My parents still live in Barry's Bay. I go back to Barry's Bay as much as I can. Every year, my husband and I, and our two boys, we rent a cottage very close by on the water. It's gorgeous. It is where I feel most connected to myself, like both my present self, but my past self as well.
Every year at the lake, I lie down on the dock and I close my eyes and I think about where I am, like in life and where I want to be and I have this moment of reevaluating. That kind of experience of both literally and figuratively stepping back from my life in the city is so important to me, and it's a lot of what influenced One Golden Summer.
This interview had been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Alicia Cox Thomson.
