June Melby discusses "My Family and Other Hazards", and Jeff Miller discusses "Scoop: Notes from a Small Ice Cream Shop"

Celebrate smalltown Wisconsin at Common Good Books. There will be ice cream.

My Family and Other Hazards

When June Melby was ten years old, her parents decided on a whim to buy the miniature golf course in the small Wisconsin town where they vacationed every summer. Without any business experience or outside employees, the family sets out to open Tom Thumb Miniature Golf to the public. Naturally, there are bumps along the way. In My Family and Other Hazards, Melby recreates all the squabbling, confusion, and ultimately triumph, of one family’s quest to build something together, and brings to life the joys of one of America’s favorite pastimes. In sharp, funny prose, we get the hazards that taunted players at each hole, and the dedication and hard work that went into each one’s creation. All the familiar delights of summer are here—snowcones and popcorn and long days spent with people you love.

Melby’s relationship with the course is love-hate from the beginning, given the summer’s freedom it robs her of, but when her parents decide to sell the course years later, her panicked reaction surprises even her. Now an adult living in Hollywood, having flown the Midwest long ago, she flies back to the course to help run it before the sale goes through, wondering if she should try to stop it. As the clock ticks, she reflects on what the course meant to her both as a child and an adult, the simpler era that it represents, and the particular pains of losing your childhood home, even years after you’ve left it.

June Melby's work has appeared in McSweeney's, LA Weekly, and National Lampoon Magazine, among other places. She lives in Decorah, Iowa.

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Scoop: Notes from a Small Ice Cream Shop

Minnesota-born lawyer, Jeff Miller, and his partner, Dean, enjoyed a successful and fashionable life in London. They shopped at Harvey Nichols, walked their dogs in Kensington Gardens, and vacationed in France and Tibet. Yet, they dreamed of a new life. In January, Jeff was promoted to a coveted position at his bank; in March, he resigned. Jeff and Dean sold their house, packed the dogs, and moved to the sleepy resort town of Hayward, Wisconsin, where they acquired a nostalgic ice cream shop and rundown Victorian mansion.

Scoop: Notes from a Small Ice Cream Shop is the chronicle of Jeff and Dean's first year in Hayward--how they are welcomed by a collection of colorful characters and how they are humbled by the challenges of operating both the ice cream shop and a bed and breakfast. It is also a story of Hayward and how the traditions and the stories of those who built the town helped our entrepreneurs adjust to the rhythm of life in their new home.

Jeff Miller was born in Browerville, Minnesota. He spent years as an international lawyer in New York, Hong Kong, and London. Since 2005 he has lived in Hayward, Wisconsin, where he operates West's Hayward Dairy and McCormick House Inn.