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.
