Sally Collins
It’s the spring of 2009 in Deer Valley, Wisconsin, and with the crack of a screen door, twenty-year-old Emily Schmidt’s life is about to change. Born and raised and still living in The Honky Tonk, her dad’s flagging tavern, Emily’s tired of the patrons’ same old conversations, the jukebox’s same old sad songs, and her dad’s same old drunken tirades. Loyal, but lonely and struggling with an unsettling incident with one of the regulars, she’s secretly planning to pursue her own dreams - like her high school classmates who’ve scattered across the Midwest and Jacob Larsen, the young man passing through on his way to Door County. But when her world falls apart and she’s nowhere left to turn, Emily journeys across the state in search of work, questioning everything she thought she knew about family, friendship, and love. Hired on the spot at The Schooner, a restaurant on the shore of Lake Michigan, she embarks on a summer she never expected, filled with colorful relationships and unforgettable experiences that force her to grow in ways she never imagined, heal in ways she never knew she needed, and face the unrelenting shadows of the past. Muddled Cherries is an evocative coming-of-age story about the gravitational power of family, inextricable bonds of sisterhood, and the endless possibilities that arise when you find your own voice, your own way.
