The summer place from which Sloan Wilson's novel takes its title is an island off the coast of Maine. On this island, one summer, Ken Jorgenson and Sylvia Raymond meet. Both are outsiders, confused by the island's rigid caste life. The story of what happens to them and to the people they marry and to their children is the central thread of a novel about how marriages are made on earth - some out of fear, some out of pride, some out of desperation. A Summer Place is the title of a 1958 novel by author Sloan Wilson, who also wrote The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The story examines the adult lives of two onetime teen lovers, Ken and Sylvia, who were from different social strata (he was self-supporting, working as a lifeguard at a Maine island resort, while her family stayed as guests of the owners, one summer between years at college), and went on to marry different people; entirely the wrong people, it turned out.