Andrew Careaga

Here we are, on the verge of official summer, which begins with Sunday’s solstice. If you’re still scrambling to put together a summer reading list, I recommend you consider adding Florida writer Jillian Luft‘s debut novel Scumbag Summer to your list.

Published in 2024 by House of Vlad Press, the novel is set in 2003 Orlando. The protagonist, a recent liberal arts graduate from a public college in Florida, heads to “O-Town” to secure an entry-level clerical job. She soon falls for her flirtatious, painkiller-addicted boss and slides into a summertime affair that is complicated by all kinds of family issues on both sides. Rather than attempt to summarize this novel myself and inadvertently publish spoilers, I refer you to Jennifer Ostopovich’s excellent review from last August and offer this blurb from the Bookshop.org book description:

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.

Jillian’s other writing includes short fiction and nonfiction in literary magazines like Hobart, Booth, X-R-A-Y, The Forge Literary Magazine, and many others. She writes in raw but beautiful language about illness and death, mothers and daughters, pop culture and Florida, bodies and desire–topics that “typically arise from deep-seated obsessions or something that’s piqued my curiosity.” (For a sample of her recent work, I recommend “Dottie After Dark,” an exquisite nonfiction piece that reads like a short story.) She is also the founder of Sweet Trash Press, a publishing imprint of House of Vlad, and is working on a memoir about caregiving for her terminally ill mother as a preteen. Read on to learn about her debut novel, her other writing, and her definition of scumbag.