{"id":242044,"date":"2026-07-13T05:53:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/242044\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T05:53:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:53:15","slug":"chicago-writers-on-the-citys-beach-reads-and-their-new-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/242044\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Writers on the City’s Beach Reads, And Their New Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

<\/a> Photo: Craig Cameron<\/p>\n

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Chicagoans do not leave Chicago in the summer.<\/p>\n

Each year we await this why-we-live-here season and its unabashed joy. The explosion of sunlight and fragrant blooms. Ice-cold beverages perspiring on patios and dogs strutting in tiny baseball caps. Parks filled with melodious concerts and streets with fragrant culinary festivals. The beaches from Rogers Park to South Shore suddenly a patchwork of gleaming bodies, brightly patterned towels, paleta carts, and books with pages glowing white-hot in the sun.<\/p>\n

Chicago beaches in the summer are full of readers. Their tastes are as unique as our neighborhoods, and far more complex than the ubiquitous descriptor \u201cbeach read\u201d could possibly capture. Take a look at the book covers you pass the next time you\u2019re walking your dog or dipping your toes in the surprisingly cold Lake Michigan surf. You\u2019ll find philosophers and revolutionaries, fantasy tomes and essay collections, true crime and quirky little zines.<\/p>\n

We love books because we have a rich literary community in Chicago. This includes dozens of independent bookstores, MFA programs, reading series and live lit events, the Midwest\u2019s largest outdoor book fair, and the country\u2019s first museum dedicated to American writers. We have too many exceptional resident storytellers to count, from celebrated poets and spoken-word auteurs like inaugural Chicago Poet Laureate avery r. young, to New York Times-bestselling authors like Daniel Kraus, whose 2025 summer novel \u201cAngel Down\u201d is making the rounds again after winning the Pulitzer Prize, along with his most recent release \u201cThe Sixth Nik.\u201d<\/p>\n

We also love nothing more in this city than to claim things as ours. Hot dogs and pizza, blues and house music, skyscrapers, the Pope, everything dope (h\/t Shermann \u201cDilla\u201d Thomas). Which led me to wonder: why aren\u2019t we talking about Chicago beach reads?<\/p>\n

I asked four local authors with novels releasing this summer to try to define the kind of books our city likes to read while lounging Lake-side.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> Rowan Beaird\/Photo: Faith Kelsey Photography<\/p>\n

A page-turner with heart<\/p>\n

Rowan Beaird tells me she\u2019s seen people reading Nietzsche and \u201cWar and Peace\u201d on beaches in Chicago.<\/p>\n

\u201cChicagoans are very smart, and we\u2019ll take on those heavy books, regardless of the season,\u201d she says, admitting that she once sobbed on a picturesque beach in Thailand while reading Ann Patchett\u2019s \u201cBel Canto.\u201d But who\u2019s to say a terrorist hostage-situation novel isn\u2019t a great vacation read? (I read Rebecca Makkai\u2019s \u201cThe Great Believers\u201d on a Greek island, another beautiful tearjerker of a story, set in part during the AIDS crisis in Chicago.)<\/p>\n

Beaird describes her summer reading list as the type of books she\u2019s interested in writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSummer is when you want to be in Chicago. I want to be transported somewhere else in the books that I read, because I\u2019m staying home,\u201d Beaird says. \u201cI just really love\u2014and this is also what I\u2019m always trying to write\u2014a propulsive page-turner. But I also want it to be really beautifully written, and I want real flesh-and-blood characters. And I want that story to take me somewhere totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beaird\u2019s debut novel, \u201cThe Divorc\u00e9es,\u201d is set amidst the glamor and intrigue of a 1950s divorce ranch. Her new book, \u201cTenderness,\u201d takes place during the 1970s at an island wedding. Out July 21, the novel is a braided story with three perspectives. including the bride, Shay, who has recent ties to the headline-making cult Synanon. Both are transportive, atmospheric books whose characters have deep inner lives and conflicting desires.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

<\/a> \u201cTenderness\u201d by Rowan Beaird<\/p>\n

The idea for \u201cTenderness\u201d began at an unusually tense wedding weekend. Beaird was in the phase of life in her late twenties that she describes as \u201can endless sequence of weddings\u201d for friends and family, mostly incredibly joyful celebrations that center around reuniting with loved ones and dancing and cake. But not this one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to a particular wedding where I didn\u2019t know the bride and groom very well, and immediately when I arrived, it became very clear to me that most of the attendees did not think this couple should be wed,\u201d Beaird says. \u201cI started to hear all of these side conversations and all of these whispered arguments about what he had done, and what she had done, how this was a horrible mistake. And all of a sudden, it wasn\u2019t a celebration, it wasn\u2019t a party anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

From then on, she was certain she would write a novel set over the course of a wedding weekend, following the drama that unfolds during \u201cthat bizarre time when everyone who has ever known or loved you is all of a sudden under one roof.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike other wedding novels, \u201cTenderness\u201d is not one love story but three\u2014including an exquisitely rendered sister-brother relationship between Shay and her younger brother, William.<\/p>\n

Beaird notes that there are many excellent novels, perhaps most notably \u201cLittle Women,\u201d that delve into the nuances of relationships between sisters, but none that offer the same treatment for the sister-brother dynamic. She has a sister and a brother who informed that relationship at the heart of \u201cTenderness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought of \u2018The Divorc\u00e9es\u2019 as a romance about friendship, and I do think that there\u2019s an element to \u2018Tenderness\u2019 that\u2019s like a romance,\u201d she says. \u201cThe deep love that can be shared between siblings, and how important that is to our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

A very different relationship dynamic is also explored in \u201cTenderness,\u201d through flashbacks that explore why Shay got involved with the Synanon cult. Beaird describes herself as someone who has \u201calways been obsessed with cults,\u201d but as she grew older she realized that behind the salacious aspects\u2014bizarre beliefs, strange clothing and horrific acts of violence\u2014these are groups that offer people something of value.<\/p>\n

And she began to see someone like Shay as not so different from herself, had the circumstances of her life been different.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to realize that, really, the one thing that people who join cults typically share is that they\u2019re at a point of transition and vulnerability,\u201d Beaird says, citing leaving a church or a marriage as such pivotal and painful events. \u201cI thought about the moments in my life when I\u2019ve been at my most vulnerable, and if someone had reached out a hand to me and said, \u2018Here, come join us, we have a lot of answers to all the questions that you\u2019re asking right now,\u2019 I feel like I would have joined a cult in a heartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a> Kathleen Rooney\/Photo: Beth Rooney<\/p>\n

Funny and philosophical<\/p>\n

Like Beaird, bestselling author and poet Kathleen Rooney agrees that a Chicago beach read is transportive. A way for people posting their #SummertimeChi selfies to travel elsewhere while reading, whether that\u2019s on an actual beach, lounging in a park or standing on a crowded El car.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically people think of a beach read as being escapist,\u201d she says, referencing the tone of thrillers and romance novels. \u201cA Chicago beach read might be less escapist\u2014not that there\u2019s anything wrong with wanting to escape!\u2014and more transportive, it just really takes you somewhere else. Like, \u2018I\u2019m fine being here, but this is gonna take me away.\u2019 I think also, Chicago leans a little more political and less fashionable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whereas Beaird\u2019s book takes place in the pressure-cooker of a small, remote island off the coast of Virginia, Kathleen Rooney\u2019s fifth novel, \u201cMan Overboard!\u201d (out July 7), is set within the enormity of the ocean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ocean itself is a killing machine,\u201d she says matter-of-factly. \u201cI fear it, I respect it, I\u2019m in awe of it, it\u2019s sublime. But it\u2019s sublime in the true, you know, [Edmund] Burkean philosophical sense, where it\u2019s a terrible beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rooney is more afraid of the ocean than most people, and has the story to prove it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see the ocean until I was, like, nineteen years old, which is late,\u201d she says. \u201cI was with my best friend from college on this trip that his dad very generously took us on to Costa Rica. And the first time I saw the ocean, I had the only panic attack I\u2019ve ever had in my life: I fully just lost it. I later read that, I think it\u2019s Charlotte, one of the Bronte sisters\u2014and I put this in the book, too\u2014she passed out the first time she saw the ocean. She got there and just fainted. I get it, girl!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

<\/a> \u201cMan Overboard!\u201d by Kathleen Rooney<\/p>\n

Thankfully the protagonist of Rooney\u2019s book, a former college swimmer nicknamed \u201cKick,\u201d emerges with his consciousness and wits intact after drunkenly plunging from the deck of an all-inclusive cruise with his family. Things get both harrowing and weird from there, with some speculative elements surfacing on occasion. And it\u2019s much funnier than a reader might expect, going into an ocean survival story.<\/p>\n

Rooney\u2019s sense of humor shines in her previous historical novels, perhaps most acutely in her World War I tale \u201cCher Ami and Major Whittlesey\u201d (narrated in part by a taxidermied pigeon at a Smithsonian museum), but \u201cMan, Overboard!\u201d dials the jokes up along with the stakes. Each chapter represents another hour that Kick fights to stay alive, hoping someone will rescue him.<\/p>\n

\u201cStories that are sad are always strangely sadder when you sprinkle in comedy,\u201d Rooney says. \u201cI think humor can often be like a deflecting mechanism and a coping mechanism, which I think is a lot of how Kick uses it, but it can also be the subversive thing that turns a situation around and lets you really get at the heart of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She references another philosopher, as she often does in conversation, noting that the longer Kick is in the water, the more the humor in the novel becomes almost Freudian in tone, where every joke has a kernel of truth to it. (See Sigmund Freud\u2019s \u201cJokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious\u201d for more on this topic.) But she also set out to write an entertaining book, in a way only she can.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes comedy doesn\u2019t get the gravitas that it deserves, or that sometimes tragedy does,\u201d Rooney says. \u201cI think in a way, I\u2019ve written a Chicago beach read, because it is funny and transportive, but when you peel back the layers and get to that Freudian kernel of the joke, it\u2019s actually [about] a dynamic character who needs to change, and you\u2019re with him on this journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

As to whether or not Kick makes it out of the terribly beautiful ocean alive, she\u2019s not giving anything away, but adds that she hopes the novel is \u201cfun for people in a beachy, yet philosophically satisfying manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a> Cynthia Pelayo, courtesy of the author<\/p>\n

Makes you miss your El stop<\/p>\n

Bram Stoker Award-winning author and poet Cynthia Pelayo tells me Chicagoans need the kind of book \u201cthat\u2019s gonna grab us by our collars.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is planning to reread Kraus\u2019 \u201cAngel Down\u201d this summer, a gruesome World War I novel written in a single audacious, bloody and relentless sentence. The two horror writers are friends who talked extensively about World War I, the mechanization of war and trench warfare, and the kinds of things that were said to manipulate people into participating in the generation-defining destruction it caused.<\/p>\n

Pelayo\u2019s recently released seventh novel, \u201cIt Came From Neverland,\u201d reimagines the childhood fairytale of \u201cPeter Pan\u201d in the same time period, with Wendy Darling as a slightly older school teacher working with orphaned children and reading to soldiers just back from the Western Front, wounded and traumatized.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started researching World War I, one thing that stood out to me is that a lot of younger men\u2014much younger men, boys\u2014from farmlands and rural communities were signing up for the war,\u201d Pelayo says. \u201cNo one was really questioning it, and [the boys] were just lying. And so there was something about that juxtaposition of these really young men going off to war, and then the Lost Boys. I wanted to explore that: the horror of war, the horror of the world that she\u2019s living in changing fast, and then the memories of her past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

<\/a> \u201cIt Came From Neverland\u201d by Cynthia Pelayo<\/p>\n

As a child, Pelayo loved Disney\u2019s animated \u201cPeter Pan\u201d and \u201cHook\u201d with Robin Williams. When she grew up and became a parent herself, she began to see the story in a more sinister way: a supposed \u201cboy\u201d who never grows up, taking children away from their homes at night. Making elaborate promises he may or may not be able to keep.<\/p>\n

In Pelayo\u2019s propulsive and surreal telling, Neverland is as dangerous a place as a battlefield, and we eventually learn the sinister identity Peter has been hiding. But she tells me she didn\u2019t want to portray her version of Peter as a strictly Pennywise-type creature, despite the quippy marketing materials that frame her novel as \u201c\u2018Peter Pan\u2019 meets Stephen King\u2019s \u2018It\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it would be more monstrous to show him as a manipulative person, and how he could create and cause massive harm just with language,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In the summer when her kids are home, she has more time for reading. Pelayo loves \u201cgetting lost in something that\u2019s beautiful, and that slowly pulls [her] under.\u201d Her recommended beach reads include complex speculative novels in translation like \u201cOur Share of Night\u201d by Argentine author Mariana Enriquez and \u201cHurricane Season\u201d by Mexican author Fernanda Melchor.<\/p>\n

Chicagoans need more than just an escape in the summer, she insists. \u201cWe need something that\u2019s gonna grab us by our collars, because we already live in the best place in the world,\u201d she says. \u201cYou know, if it makes you miss your stop on the El, that\u2019s phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a> Dawn Turner, courtesy of the author<\/p>\n

A book with more heft to it<\/p>\n

Rooney tells me about a financial thriller she enjoyed last August, Chicago writer Amran Gowani\u2019s \u201cLeverage,\u201d that sounds gripping enough to warrant a missed train stop while providing social commentary in the form of a Wall Street satire. It\u2019s about a hedge fund analyst who loses a $300 million investment and finds himself working against the clock to avoid existential consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlongside the thrill, you\u2019re really learning about that [hedge fund] environment and the way people who work in that environment are treated, especially if they\u2019re women or minorities,\u201d Rooney says.<\/p>\n

Race and class issues in a fictional Chicago suburb are the simmering undercurrent of \u201cMajestic Hills,\u201d the third novel from award-winning journalist and author Dawn Turner. A former Chicago Tribune reporter and columnist, she wrote extensively about race, politics and people whose stories too often remain untold.<\/p>\n

Out August 4, \u201cMajestic Hills\u201d follows the story of Black power couple Josephine and Langdon Blaque\u2014he\u2019s an emergency-room doctor, she\u2019s a lawyer\u2014living in a condo downtown until Langdon convinces her to give the peace and quiet of the title suburb a try. The premise is based on Turner\u2019s life, when her ex-husband suggested a similar move.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust out of the blue, right before we were married, he\u2019s like, \u2018Well, why don\u2019t we live in the country?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Why don\u2019t we not? How about we don\u2019t do that?\u2019\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cBut I did give him a year, and we wound up being there for two decades because I absolutely loved the community. We had amazing neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

<\/a> \u201cMajestic Hills\u201d by Dawn Turner<\/p>\n

The Blaques\u2019 neighbors in Majestic Hills, mostly white, are welcoming and kind at first, inviting the new couple to social events and making them feel like part of a community. But an unexpected crime pulls deeply ingrained prejudices to the surface, fracturing the neighborhood and the Blaques\u2019 once-solid foundation.<\/p>\n

Turner says that she wanted to explore a closer relationship among the residents, the sort of \u201clove thy neighbor\u201d place where people don\u2019t have fences between their yards and can pick herbs and vegetables out of each other\u2019s gardens.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the end of the book, people who are allies are still allies,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m hoping that by the end, the people who\u2026 They\u2019re on this fence, so to speak. Maybe with a trauma, when something big happens [to the community] people can start to think about, or maybe rethink some of their prejudices or notions. Those things that just kind of keep us apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one particularly memorable scene, Langdon shares at a Fourth of July gathering that his family would read Frederick Douglass\u2019 famous speech \u201cWhat to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?\u201d each year on the holiday. The ensuing conversation reveals historic injustices and feels especially timely, given this summer\u2019s nationwide celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am drawn to the books that have a little bit more heft,\u201d Turner says of her beach reads, which is an apt description of her novel as well.<\/p>\n

One recent book she\u2019s looking forward to reading this summer is \u201cBlack Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors\u201d edited by Desiree Cooper, a nonfiction collection of essays, poetry and graphic stories. Turner was in Cleveland this spring with one of the contributing essayists and enjoyed her reading of the piece that appears in the book.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also planning to read Jeff Hobbs\u2019 new nonfiction book \u201cSeeking Shelter: A Working Mother, Her Children, and a Story of Homelessness in America.\u201d Not a light read, but an important one. One with more heft to it.<\/p>\n

The kind of thing a Chicagoan would read on the beach.<\/p>\n

Because we are, in the words of Chicago bard Carl Sandburg, a \u201ccity with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll read what we damn well please.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt Came From Neverland\u201d by Cynthia Pelayo is available from Crooked Lane Books.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan Overboard!\u201d by Kathleen Rooney is available July 7 from Gallery Books. Rooney will appear in conversation with Deborah Shapiro on Saturday, July 11 at 3pm at Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 South Woodlawn.<\/p>\n

\u201cTenderness\u201d by Rowan Beaird is available July 21 from Flatiron Books. A launch event with Beaird will be held on Tuesday, July 21 at 7pm at Exile in Bookville, 410 South Michigan (second floor).<\/p>\n

\u201cMajestic Hills\u201d by Dawn Turner is available August 4 from Scribner. A launch event with Turner will be held on Wednesday, August 5 at 7 p.m. at Call & Response Books, 1390 E. Hyde Park, Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Craig Cameron It is a truth universally acknowledged that Chicagoans do not leave Chicago in the summer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-242044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}