In this complex and emotionally resonant novel, debut author Jen Ferguson serves up a powerful story about rage, secrets, and all the spectrums that make up a person—and the sweetness that can still live alongside the bitterest truth.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and first chapter from Jen Ferguson’s The Summer of Bitter and Sweet, which is out now!
Lou has enough confusion in front of her this summer. She’ll be working in her family’s ice cream shack with her newly ex-boyfriend—whose kisses never made her feel desire, only discomfort—and her former best friend, King, who is back in their Canadian prairie town after disappearing three years ago without a word.
But when she gets a letter from her biological father—a man she hoped would stay behind bars for the rest of his life—Lou immediately knows that she cannot meet him, no matter how much he insists.
While King’s friendship makes Lou feel safer and warmer than she would have thought possible, when her family’s business comes under threat, she soon realizes that she can’t ignore her father forever.
Chapter 1
June 12
Red: Winter isn’t colorless—it’s full of shine, depth, and shades we often refuse to see. But many of us find winters long and dull. When the season opens at the Michif Creamery, we start with reds. They contrast loudly, wake us up, as spring announces itself with what seem like impossible buds on trees.
We’re a sight. Three pickup trucks traveling down the highway, each with one of the Creamery’s picnic tables hanging over the tailgate. And me, in the lead, in my old bronze F-150, my best friend, Florence, laughing from her shotgun seat. Summer arrives to the prairies slow—and stays for such a short time. But Florence and me, we’re tough enough. We’ve wound down the windows all the way, because it’s tradition.
Last year this time, we were so giddy for summer, for freedom. Florence is trying to bring us back to that place. Her red hair whips around the cab like a storm. It tickles my arm, my cheek. We’re singing along to the radio—bad country music because, again, it’s tradition. If doing something two years running makes for tradition.
But it’s not the trucks and Florence’s wild hair causing us to stand out on Highway 16. It’s one of the cattle dogs, with his orange-and-white coat, riding atop the picnic table I’m hauling like he’s surfing. Homer’s a character—an old man with the heart of a young pup. He’s the star of cleanup day.
It’s not the best day of the season. It’s not the worst. But it’s certainly a show.
When we approach the turn into the shack’s lot, I slow down carefully, watching Homer’s dog-smile out the rearview to be sure he’s ready for this. It’s a balance, and keeping the balance is my job. Homer trusts me. We pull into the clearing, where the shack has sat all winter, and before I can park, an orange-and-white blur jumps off the truck, kissing the land with a little thud. He settles in for the day, in the shade against a stand of trees, where he’ll watch us, like he watches the cows. Coyotes, bears, and other predators don’t get too close, not with Homer standing guard.
As we wait for my uncle Dom and my mom to arrive, Florence examines her freshly painted nails, all red like blood. She’s decked head to toe in black. Her skinny jeans are artfully ripped at the knees and across one thigh. We’re giggling over the song lyrics pouring out of my speakers—trucks, girls, and ice-cold beers, like that’s all there is to life—when Dom raps on the side of the truck and says, “Let’s get started!”
“Loading the picnic tables and the paint and all these supplies wasn’t part of the job?” I ask, climbing down.
Throwing his head back so his gorgeous brown hair flutters, Dom grins.
Once we unload the picnic tables, my mom lugs her massive beading kit from her truck. She’s brought her portable stadium seat with her—the one she drags to the pool when she watches me swim. She’s here to keep us company, not to work. Last week, she quit her hellish job at the 911 dispatch to dedicate herself to art. She spent the first fall we lived here learning the craft. Her fingers bled first, then callused over. Now, she beads while she watches TV, beads while she eats.
If she could, she’d do it in her sleep.
She’s leaving me, leaving us for the summer. But she’s here today. Teasing and cackling at me, or her brother, with entire lungfuls of air.
No one asks where Wyatt, my boyfriend, is this morning. And I’m glad for that. Glad too, in a strange way, he hasn’t shown. As we paint boards with a new layer of whitewash, Florence squeals with delight when drips stain her jeans. In September, she’ll wear these on her round-the-world trip, and people will think they’re designer. We’ve already cleared the mousetraps and removed any spiders who’ve taken up residence by relocating them to the bush.
Next weekend, we open.
When my uncle Maurice joins us, he’s bearing lunch. But instead of heading for food, Florence smears a big gob of paint from her palm onto mine. She smiles, radiant.
“Gross,” I say.
“Follow me.” With a paint-smeared grip she pulls me around back of the shack. We’re butted up against the trees. Day by day, they’re turning vibrant green. The ground, too, is covered with spring growth, and errant rocks. “Kneel.”
I do.
She doesn’t release my hand. Hers is warm, the paint between us turning sticky, like glue—like Florence is trying hard not to let me go. Not yet. When Florence insists we lie on our backs to reach under the shack, we do it—hands still clasped—even though it takes some maneuvering. Under here, it’s cooler and the good rot of the undergrowth is strong.
“Okay, now that our gymnastics routine is complete—I give us a six out of ten, by the way, and the Russian judge merits it no higher than a three, in case you were wondering.”
I grin.
“Press your hand to the wood. Like me.”
“Why, exactly?”
“You’re asking why? After all that?”
I shrug with one shoulder.
“To mark our place, of course, Louie.”
The rough underside of the shack sucks up paint, Florence’s print next to mine. A drip stains my cheek like a tear.
“There,” she says, quiet and not like Florence at all. “Now we’ll be here as long as this shack of yours stands. No matter where we are, we’ll be here too.”
My skin breaks out in gooseflesh, and my lungs expand and contract like I’m swimming hard.
Florence wipes paint from my face carefully. All she can manage is a nod.
What she doesn’t say: Next summer, we won’t be here. I’ll be at university balancing lectures and fieldwork—hopefully training with the competitive water polo team on weekends. And Florence, she’ll be who knows where. Thailand, on a beach, or the Australian outback working a season on a sheep farm, or Kenya—photographing Mount Kilimanjaro from her campsite.
“Come get lunch, you two!” my mom hollers.
Before we rise from the ground, Florence tries to speak. A strangled sob escapes. She’s hardly ever without words.
“I know,” I say, and help her up.
We rejoin my family. Dom hands me a wet rag to clean my hands and finally asks after Wyatt. “Where’s that boyfriend of yours? He said he’d start work today.”
Some paint rubs off, but most of it stays stuck. “Probably still in bed.”
My mom’s left eyebrow is arched high. “What do you know about his bed?”
I pick at the paint along my cuticles. “You all know what I mean.”
“Lazy arse,” Florence says, building herself a sandwich. “I didn’t sleep well.” Her bipolar disorder messes with sleep—big time. “And I was here, almost on time,” she adds, peering over at Dom.
Technically, it’s a family business. But the Creamery is Dom’s project.
Maybe making excuses for Wyatt is what I’m supposed to do. Like it’s my job as his girlfriend. But I can’t quite defend him. Can’t offer words of support. Even now, talking about him, I’m low-key happy he didn’t show.
“This doesn’t bode well, my niece.” Dom’s head drops the tiniest bit, but it drops.
I continue picking at specks of paint until I switch over to ravaging unmarred skin. “He’ll be here next weekend.”
Dom’s brown eyes are tight. And though he doesn’t say it, he’s thinking that hiring Wyatt was my idea. At the time, it seemed a good one. To spend one last summer with my best friend and my boyfriend.
Out of the corner of her eye, Florence watches as I pick, pick, at my cuticles. She swats at my hand. “Stop it.”
My mom glances up from her beading.
At the far end of the picnic table, Maurice’s words barely carry against the traffic on the highway. “Fewer employees means less overhead. Can’t the girls handle this on their own?”
“Two isn’t enough. Three’s pushing it.” Dom shakes his head. “We’ll survive.”
That word.
Survival is always in the back of our minds. What if the locals don’t rally this year? What if we need another loan? What if Mom quitting a job that made her miserable, that loaded her down with trauma shift after shift, to sell beadwork on the road is a huge mistake? What if Wyatt goofs off all summer and that’s the deciding factor to my family’s survival?
“Hey, the sun’s coming out,” Florence says.
I ignore my uncles’ chatter to focus on this good lunch, on the sun helping dry the paint we’ve liberally applied to the shack. For now, it gleams. Later, the shine will dull. By summer’s end, it won’t look like we did this at all.
Finished with her meal, Florence climbs on top of the table. She wiggles the ponytail from my hair and starts to play.
My mom pulls a long length of thread through her design. “Your braids are too loose, Florence.”
“It’s pretty this way.”
“Tight braids highlight the cheekbones.”
They’re teasing each other. It’s how they’ve always been, since I brought Florence home to finish a biology project after she joined our class in the middle of the semester our grade eleven year.
“There’s more than one kind of braid,” I say, and my mom stops teasing. A tightness claims her eyes. She almost looks hurt. Like even this basic statement weighs her down with the pain of my old lies.
Florence just says, “Oh, shush, you.”
I don’t know which of us she’s shushing. Mom falls silent too. It could be the beads—she’s hurrying to fill her stock. It could be what I said, what she thinks I implied.
Florence continues finger-combing little tangles. “You could still abscond with me? Ditch the boyfriend and run?”
I sigh.
My mom clears her throat. We’re supposed to hear it. She’s contributing to the conversation again.
“It’s not like a gap year means she’ll never go to uni, never play water polo, Auntie Louisa.”
My mom’s face lights up. “My daughter could be the next Waneek Horn-Miller! Lou could go all the way to the—”
“Olympics,” I say at same time as my mom. Some days, I believe it’s possible. We moved so often I didn’t have a picture for home in my mind’s eye—but I’ve always had my mom, my fascination with dinosaur bones, and water polo. These days, my family is bigger. My home is a single-story farmhouse with a cool, comforting basement.
We leave my mom to finish the edging on the earrings she started this morning—deep-gold ponies—to work for a few more hours. Near the end of the day, we crack open the shoebox filled with photos and mementos of the Creamery’s first two summers and paste them along the back wall.
Florence peers at me, holding a photo of us.
She needs to hear me say it. Again. “I can’t go with you on your amazing trip. I’m sorry I can’t. But we still have the whole summer.”
“We’ll make it the best one then.”
I find the tip jar and tape a weathered Albertasaurus sticker that doesn’t stick on its own anymore to the glass, positioning it next to the cash register. It’s bittersweet, but it’s part of this place.
“And we’re done!” Florence claps. Her energy is contagious. A little like sunshine.
We’re done, but we’re not ready to leave yet. Dom settles next to my mom. Florence perches on top of the picnic table, scrolling through her phone. Soon enough, my uncle has drawn us from our corners, and we’re snorting over one of his stories. That leads my mom to correct Dom’s story, and Dom to correct Mom’s, and suddenly the story’s evolved into something completely new.
If the white SUV hadn’t stopped, we’d have sat around that picnic table, me petting Homer’s soft fur, all of us laughing so hard it almost hurt, until the mosquitoes ventured out in search of blood. But a white SUV with tinted windows turns into the clearing. The interruption sets me off. The almonds we’ve been snacking on turn bitter on my tongue, grit against my teeth. Homer rises, leaves my side, and takes up watch.
The passenger window glides down—halfway. A blond woman with gaudy red lips leans, nose first, toward us. “When do y’all open?”
Dom doesn’t approach the vehicle. “Sunday next. Eleven to eight.”
“Fine,” she says, and the window climbs, concealing her face.
The white SUV reverses toward us to make the turn. The license plate is one of those vanity plates. They’re such a waste of money. Wyatt’s been wanting one. This one says: FREED. It merges back onto the highway, heading toward town.
Florence stands. “They weren’t the friendliest of ice cream fans. You know them, Dominic?”
“She’s older than me. We wouldn’t have gone to school together. If she’s a local. Louisa?” Dom asks.
My mom compares one earring to its pair, her face lopsided. “I screwed up the pattern. There’s too much gold here. Not enough little yellow ones.”
“Mom? That woman, do you know her?”
“I’m going to have to tear this apart.”
“Mom?” I say again, knowing how she can sink into her art, sink so deeply she leaves us even while she’s in the same room. Plus, she’s anxious around strangers. Only consented to come out here today because the shack was closed to the public.
“I know she’s not a natural blond,” my mom says lightly, and then she starts ripping out stitches. “Couldn’t see the driver. Could you?”
Dom shakes his head. “Should we pack this up? Get home to our supper?”
I whistle at Homer, who lobs over, his fur covered in burrs. Later tonight, I’ll pick them out. Maybe by then, the nervous feeling in my stomach will have settled.
