Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, mental illness, and death.

The Summer Guests is set in the fictional Maine town of Purity, which is deeply inspired by the town of Camden, a summer seaside colony in southern Maine with a permanent population of only 5,200. As depicted in the novel, hundreds of wealthy people from New York and Boston travel to their summer “cottages” in the area every summer.

Author Tess Gerritsen uses the unique geography and culture of small-town Maine to add local color to the novel’s mystery and intrigue. For instance, Gerritsen sprinkles in the idiomatic language typical of Mainers, as when Chief Jo Thibodeau refers to the tourists as “people from away” (39). The names of some local characters are also typical of the region. For example, Thibodeau is a common family name among Acadians, the descendants of French colonists who settled in what is today Maine when it was a French colony from 1604 to 1713. Gerritsen also accurately captures the natural aspects of the setting, such as the presence of bird species like the barn swallow, the house finch, and the eastern towhee, and the brutality of the winter.