Scumbag Summer — Jillian Luft

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.

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Praise for Scumbag Summer

“Scumbag Summer is a bible for hedonism and heartbreak, where bad choices give us a reason to live. While the narrator is seeking magic, the reader will find it radiating through every page. In this remarkable debut, Jillian Luft has charged onto the scene as Florida’s Eve Babitz.”—LEXI KENT-MONNING, author of Burden of Joy

“I’m going to yearn forever for the lives lived in Scumbag Summer, which 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—but just the moment before—because once it’s over, you’ll be wishing you were back at the beginning experiencing it for the first time again.”—ELLE NASH, author of Deliver Me

“Scumbag Summer is a burning sensation, is young and drunk, is numb bodies hurled at risk to feel alive, and the sick heartbreak and elation of want, with lyrical devastation, sensual, hot, wet, and textured in its humanity. It is sex, shock, and scandal, longing and shame, nostalgia and escape, and the precarious balance of innocence with dark hunger for meaning. Jillian’s book captures the thrill of racing toward danger, and she knows Florida in her cells.”—SARAH GERARD, author of True Love