In this “moving story of how sacrifices accumulate in the wake of passions left unfulfilled” ( Publishers Weekly )—perfect for fans of Fredrik Backman and Lisa Genova—a poet must decide if he should put his family’s or his own needs first when he returns to Italy help run the family business he left behind years ago. As the heir to a proud Northern Italian ice-cream dynasty, Giovanni Talamini’s family is none too happy when he decides to break with tradition and travel the world as a poet. So when Giovanni receives an unexpected call from his brother, he is faced with a difficult decision: return home to serve in his family’s interests or continue on his own path in life once and for all? In a heartwarming tale that weaves history with lore and poetry with delicious recipes, The Ice-Cream Makers paints a century-long, multigenerational portrait of a family wrestling with their identity and how to ensure their legacy. This is a “delightful read; smooth as ice cream on a hot summer day” ( Kirkus Reviews ). “[A] moving story of how sacrifices accumulate in the wake of passions left unfulfilled.” ― Publishers Weekly “Van der Kwast tells his multigenerational tale with great sensitivity, demonstrating through powerful observations the long-term effect of one person's decision upon others throughout the generations. A delightful read; smooth as ice cream on a hot summer day.” ― Kirkus Reviews "Ernest van der Kwast tells about love between man and woman, about love between two brothers, and about the moment when both vanish. Sensuous, heartfelt, deliciously beautiful." ― Brigitte magazine ‘Style, timing, and a flair for language: Van der Kwast is one of the best!’ ― Vrij Nederland Ernest van der Kwast is a Dutch author whose novel Mama Tandoori was an international bestseller. The Ice-Cream Makers How My Father Lost His Heart to a Hammer Thrower Weighing One Hundred and Eighty-Three Pounds SHORTLY BEFORE his eightieth birthday, my father fell in love. It was love at first sight; love like a bolt from the blue, like lightning striking a tree. My mother phones to tell me. “Beppi has lost his mind,” she says. It happened during a live broadcast of the London Olympics. During the women’s hammer-throw final, to be precise. Since my father had a satellite dish installed on the roof, he’s had access to more than a thousand channels. He spends whole days in front of the television—a beautiful flat-screen—and presses the button of the remote control at a consistently high tempo. Soccer games from Japan, Arctic nature documentaries, Spanish art house films, and reports on disasters in El Salvador, Tajikistan, and Fiji flash past. And then there are the programs with women, of course: gorgeous, glorious women from all over the world. Buxom Brazilian hosts; near-naked Greek showgirls; news broadcasters whose bulletins, quite aside from the language (Macedonian? Slovenian?), are lost on him because of their full, glossy lips. Usually there will only be some five or six seconds between the channels my father alights on. But sometimes he lingers, and spends a whole evening watching coverage of the Mexican elections or a documentary series about the tropical waters off Polynesia, green as a gem. It was a Turkish sports channel that my father had stumbled across after pressing the button of the remote with his calloused thumb. The Egyptian soap that, in the space of five seconds, had homed in on just as many women’s melodramatic faces, had failed to beguile him. So Beppi pressed the button, which had once been black, then gray, and was now white, practically transparent. And that’s when he was struck by lightning. There on the screen was his princess: creamy white skin, coral-red hair, and the biceps of a butcher. She entered the circle in Olympic Stadium, grabbed the handle at the end of the chain, raised the ball over her left shoulder, and turned—one, two, three, four, five times—before hurling the iron ball with all the strength she could muster. Like a meteor having survived entry into the atmosphere, it buzzed and fizzed through the steel-blue skies of London. On impact, it left a brown hole in a meticulously cut lawn. My father dropped his remote. The lid at the back came off, and one battery rolled across the wooden floor. The Turkish commentator was full of praise for the throw, but his singsong words were lost on my father. The repeat showed his broad-shouldered ballerina a second time. Her pirouette gathered speed and ended in a brief but surprisingly elegant curtsy. He felt like he had been spinning around, too. Faster and faster. And now he was sitting here on his sofa, in love and in awe, as if he had been hit on the head by the nine-pound ball. Her name was Betty Heidler, it turned out, and she was the world record holder, having broken it by 44 inches a year ago at an international competition in Halle, Germany. It had been a warm day in May with hardly any wind, sunglasses and short