It's the summer of 2003 and an idealistic yet unambitious Florida college grad moves to Orlando-the most magical and maddening place on Earth. Determined to find transcendence in trash culture, she soon finds herself immersed in a torrid love affair with her married, opioid-addicted boss. From bowling alleys to barrooms, malls to matinees, through the dull refuse of suburbia with new and unforgettable meaning, this book is a love letter to a fleeting season of illicit love, rampant addiction, buried grief and inevitable heartbreak-a whiskey-soaked, deep-fried, classic rock-scored mega-chain ode to Florida, youth, and the swan song of the human heart.
"...sex, shock, and scandal, longing and shame, nostalgia and escape, and the precarious balance of innocence with dark hunger for meaning. [Scumbag Summer] captures the thrill of racing toward danger..."
-SARAH GERARD, author of
True Love
"...a bible for hedonism and heartbreak, where bad choices give us a reason to live."
-LEXI KENT-MONNING, author of
Burden of Joy
"...a love story by way of a dumpster fire [and] the summer's sexiest (and darkest) love letter."
-KEVIN MALONEY, author of
The Red-Headed Pilgrim
"...hits you like a crush you'll never get to touch, possessing the kind of exiled frisson that happens the moment before you kiss someone new..."
-ELLE NASH, author of
Deliver Me
"...never flinches from the tawdry, and thus blurs the merely pathetic into sublime pathos."
-JACK SKELLEY, author of
The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker
"...doesn't feel so much written as conjured from a jewel-encrusted skull buried under a burned-down gas station..."
-TROY JAMES WEAVER, author of
Temporal