The Perseids brought it all out of the past, with a force like a blowthat leaves you winded. The night lurched and seemed to swoopsuddenly down. The boy still lay on his back, but when I sat up,gasping, I glimpsed the pale disc of his face as he turned to see whathad startled me. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, though it wasn’t. It is the summer of 1954. Four young men, on a summer vacation buyan old car from a farmer and drive it from the hills of Wales all theway to the mountains of Spain. It is only a few years since the war,Europe is still in ruins. They are innocent and war-scarred, dreamersand realists, men but not much more than boys. They have their wholelives ahead of them. This will be their summer to remember. A beautiful, elegiac rumination on youth, friendship and the dreamsthat we hold. “A haunting meditation on memory and loss that takes the readeron a summer road trip to a vanished Spain. In this well-crafted,wistful novella, Sam Adams weaves his tapestry from fragments ofa remembered friendship in a coming of age tale written with sixtyyears’ bitter hindsight.” – Richard GwynSam Adams has created a rare novel in The Road to Zarauz, bothtimeless and very much of a time and a place, a past of hope andexpectation erased in a moment, and what remains when hope is gone.