Until the Fall of '19

"How many times can you make the same mistake?"

March 2008. When a heart attack strikes during his daily swim, this is the question 62-year-old Alex Morgan starts asking himself. A successful modern artist with a seemingly perfect domestic life, a compliant male partner and a badly behaved dog, Alex has been living a comfortable life behind the high walls of his sprawling Venice Beach compound. But the brush with death stirs old insecurities. Ghosts of past loves and the temptation of a new one widen the cracks appearing in his long-term relationship. As history threatens to repeat itself, leaving him heartbroken and alone once more, Alex wrestles with the choice of embarking on a new love or venturing to a place he vowed never to tread and face a familiar enemy to fight for an old one.

Moving between the sun-drenched beaches of LA, the vibrant streets of Manhattan, and the glittering waters of the Adriatic, we re-join the well-loved characters from That Summer of ’74 along with a cast of new characters as they negotiate reality TV, same-sex marriage, a USA Presidential election and the unfolding financial crisis of the summer of 2008.

And although the times have changed from that seemingly endless summer in the past when he and Rick first fell in love, the complications of fame, public opinion, and the legacy of being inextricably woven into the fabric of Sid Stradman’s family remain very much the same for Alex.

Until the Fall of ’19 is a warm-hearted romantic drama ladled with the charm and wit readers have come to associate with Howard Rayner’s books