What other research did you do around professional baking? Making my protagonist Amy a baker just made so much sense in figuring out what it was that she liked and what brought her peace and joy, and then also kind of setting up how she could land in the wedding space. So I’m going to put as much of that into this book as I possibly can. And when I first started writing this book, I was writing it for myself and I thought, You know what makes me happy? Baking things and eating things. I worked at a bakery briefly in college, but for the most part I’m self-taught and very enthusiastic and I am always pushing myself to learn more. Find her recipe for the Queerly Beloved rainbow cake at the end of the interview!Įater: What made you want to set so much of your story around baking? And, because she’s a baker in her own right, Dumond created a few recipes featured in the book for readers to try in real life, to further transport them into Amy’s wedding world. Later, Masterpiece Cakeshop refused to make a cake for a customer’s gender transition.īetween baking and Amy working at a lesbian bar, Dumond dives into how food and drink anchor both weddings and queer communities, and provide stability in times of emotional chaos. In a lawsuit, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled that Masterpiece Cakeshop had discriminated against Craig and Mullins, though the Supreme Court reversed that ruling. In 2012, a year before the book is set, real-life couple Charlie Craig and David Mullins were denied a wedding cake from Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, because owner Jack Phillips said it went against his Christian beliefs.
Queerly Beloved is not only full of mouthwatering descriptions of confections - it also highlights the role wedding cake has played in modern queer history.
It’s the one thing she’s continually able to count on. She bakes cupcakes and bread and petit-fours, both for her friends and for her fledgling wedding business, in times of joy and in times of stress. Working as a part-time for-hire bridesmaid, she also finds herself managing weddings and bridal feelings while watching ceremonies she worries she’ll never be able to participate in. Through community and baking, Amy navigates being a queer woman in sometimes-conservative Tulsa, and her people-pleasing instincts.
The story centers on Amy, a baker and bartender in Tulsa, OK, who is trying to figure out how to navigate a crush on a new-in-town lesbian working in the oil industry. In her debut romance novel Queerly Beloved, author Susie Dumond makes weddings, and therefore cake, a central part of the narrative. Though wedding traditions, and who is allowed to participate, have changed over the generations, cake remains a must in Western culture. It acts as a metaphor for the whole celebration - a little fussy, a little expensive, and tricky to get right but incredibly rewarding and sweet when you do. There is nothing that evokes a wedding quite as much as a big, fluffy cake.