Overview

It gets better, right? Michigander Elizabeth “Junior” Starreveld is fairly certain this is the worst year of her twenty-something life. Her girlfriend recently dumped her for her best friend, her longtime mentor is seriously ill, and her conservative Dutch-American family still struggles to accept her “chosen lifestyle.” When her father invites her on a business trip to the Netherlands, she suspects he plans to try to talk her into coming back to work at the family jewelry store—a return to the fold she has no intention of making. Still, a free trip to Europe is surely worth a bit of drama, isn’t it? But as she and her father explore Amsterdam and get to know each other again over dark coffee and Belgian beer, Junior begins to question what she thought she knew about her family—and herself. Could this turn out to be a good year, though one of the hardest, after all?