Summer of Night was published by Putnam in 1991. Set in the fictional town of Elm Haven, Illinois, in the summer of 1960, it follows five eleven-year-old boys who discover that Old Central School — a Victorian monstrosity being demolished at the end of the school year — contains an ancient evil. The Borgia Bell in the school’s belfry is somehow connected to a pattern of child disappearances stretching back to the 1870s.
The novel is explicitly in the tradition of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Stephen King’s It — a group of children facing supernatural evil in small-town America during a nostalgically rendered summer. Simmons acknowledged both influences but brought his own sensibility: the horror is more visceral and the children more psychologically complex than Bradbury’s, while the evil is more mythologically rooted than King’s.
The novel was followed by A Winter Haunting (2002), in which one of the boys — now a middle-aged academic — returns to Elm Haven and confronts both the remnants of the evil and his own psychological disintegration.
Collecting Summer of Night
First edition (Putnam, New York, 1991): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $40–$100
- Signed first: $100–$200
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate to strong appreciation.
The Midwestern Gothic
Summer of Night is often compared to Stephen King’s It — both feature groups of children confronting ancient evils in small American towns. But Simmons’s novel has a different texture: quieter, more literary, rooted in the specific landscape of rural Illinois. The Borgia Bell, the crumbling Old Central School, and the cornfield landscape create an atmosphere of Midwestern Gothic that is distinctly Simmons’s own.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Summer of Night part of a series? The characters return in A Winter Haunting (2002), set decades later when one of the boys — now a middle-aged professor — returns to the town and confronts the evil again. There is also Children of the Night (1992), which connects thematically though it features different characters.