A Gift for everyone who has ever loved a summer home The hilarious and heartbreaking story of an aging summer cottage, built to be "a refuge from grief with room for joy." Faced with the intrusion of an air conditioner, the builder's grand-daughter reflects on how the cottage has battled change as it fulfills its purpose-cosseting lovers, defying gangsters, sheltering wounded animals and children, and facing unique problems such as a porcupine in the basement, badgers under the support posts and a refrigerator in the bedroom. We watch the cottage adjust to history, fight for survival and always remain itself-a small house, nestled into the gentle magnificence of the Wisconsin North Woods.