The Summertime of Our Dreams by Michael Pascoe is largely nostalgia but there is also death, dying and cancer. "Some readers may find sections distressing."

A thread maintained throughout the memoir is the exchange of letters between Pascoe and a schoolboy friend - Jim - who has terminal cancer. Although the two were not particularly good friends at school, they played in the same rugby team and they share knowledge of pupils and teachers. Rugby appears to have been their dominant interest at school. Athletics runs a poor second. (Academic activities get no mention).

Through their correspondence, they discuss their fears and frailty, their growing old, their dying. The two men reach an intimacy they may not have achieved by personal contact - addressing each other as "cowboy" or "old cowboy".

Jim assures Pascoe writing his story is fine by him: "If your writings manage to help someone else, then that is even better."

Between these letters is an account of Pascoe's road trip from Sydney through the Hunter Valley to New England and on to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. Pascoe likes travelling at high speed - to "Kill the cruise control ... touch the pedal for the instant surge". He is always on the lookout for highway police.

He enjoys the scenery. Different scenes remind him of different people and times in his life: his father, a country policeman; his siblings, their life in Petrie - on the outskirts of Brisbane at that time. He gives observations and opinions on a range of subjects including: country towns, Indigenous Australians, Captain Thunderbolt, religion, USA gun laws and, inevitably, traffic accidents and roadside shrines.

However, there are joyous moments - the camaraderie of the school friends and the family anecdotes. There are positive aspects of life - though sometimes with a sting in the tail: "There are couples like that: inseparable, totally bound to each other, living in each other's life, unable to imagine life without the other, always in love. Mutually dependent, some might sniff. Recipe for eventual heartbreak."

Pascoe is an experienced finance and economics commentator. In this environment he would hear many memorable one-liners: "Don't think of this as the hottest summer of the past hundred years, think of it as one of the coolest of the next hundred", and, "... the British sent the puritans to America, they sent convicts to Australia and ... we [Australians] got the better of the deal."

Pascoe concludes The Summertime of Our Dreams with descriptions of some dogs he has known. Reading of the lives of dogs - even of their dying - is less traumatic than reading of the lives and deaths of humans.