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Start giftingThe Bartender's Cure
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Learn moreWesley Straton's The Bartender's Cure is a fiercely relatable debut novel about an aspiring bartender at the perfect neighborhood bar, filled with cocktail recipes and bartending tips and tricks.
Samantha Fisher definitely does not want to be a bartender. But after a breakup and breakdown in San Francisco, she decides to defer law school for a year to move to New York, crashing on her best friend’s couch. When she is offered a job at Joe’s Apothecary, a beloved neighborhood bar in Brooklyn, she tells herself it’s only temporary.
As Sam learns more about bartending and gets to know the service industry lifers and loyal regulars at Joe’s, she is increasingly seduced by her new job. She finds acceptance in her tight-knit community and even begins a new relationship. But as the year draws to a close, Sam is increasingly pulled between the life she thought she wanted and the possibility of a different kind of future. When destructive cycles from her past threaten to consume her again, Sam must decide how much she’s willing to let go of to finally belong.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.
Wesley Straton is a writer and bartender based in Brooklyn. She writes fiction about found families, alienation, and how where we live shapes who we are. She studied fiction at Brooklyn College, where she received the Himan Brown Creative Writing Award and served as an editor for the Brooklyn Review. Her fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train and has been shortlisted for the Disquiet Literary Prize, and she has written about international bar culture for Roads & Kingdoms, GQ, and Difford’s Guide. The Bartender’s Cure is her debut.
Reviews
“Like a finely crafted cocktail, this novel’s brilliance exists in its perfect balance of sweetness, sourness, saltiness, and strength. As much a love letter to the service industry as it is a coming-of-age story, Straton’s rendering of Brooklyn bars and found families will leave you yearning for your favorite local. Shake this triumphant debut with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. No garnish necessary.”
—Camille Perri, author of When Katie Met Cassidy and The Assistants
“The Bartender’s Cure is an evocative coming-of-age story and captivating glimpse into the world of bartending and cocktail lore. Wesley Straton’s prose is simultaneously restrained and dazzling, and protagonist Samantha Fisher is tough yet tender, singular yet familiar. This is one book hangover I'm in no hurry to recover from.”
—Margarita Montimore, author of Oona Out of Order
“A love letter to the school of life, this tender story about a dispirited San Francisco transplant looking for salvation on the Brooklyn cocktail scene is ambrosial and spiked—you’ll drink the words right up.”
—Courtney Maum, author of Touch and Costalegre