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Summertime
Set on a drought-stricken Central Texas farm during the 1950s, Summertime is a coming-of-age novel shaped by heat, family life, hard land, and the emotional weather of youth.
Publication
First published in 1986; later TCU Press edition available
Setting
Central Texas farm country during the 1950s drought years
Genre
Coming-of-age fiction / literary fiction
Ideal Readers
Readers of Texas fiction, rural literature, and character-driven family stories
A beginning in Central Texas.
Summertime introduces readers to many qualities that continue throughout Fleming's later fiction: a strong sense of place, close attention to character, and an interest in how landscape and weather shape inner life.
The drought-stricken farm setting gives the novel its emotional pressure. Heat, scarcity, family bonds, and adolescence all meet in a story of coming-of-age that feels distinctly Texan.
The Central Texas novel.
This is the foundational David Layton Fleming novel. It establishes his lifelong commitment to Texas place and to stories that arise from land, memory, and ordinary lives under strain.
On the website, it should be presented as the beginning of a long author history—an early work that still speaks directly to readers interested in rural Texas and literary realism.