I agree with you -- I think the novels are more useful for getting a feel for the setting and finding ideas, and any actual facts in it should be worked into canon or headcanon instead of taken as word of god. The novel is actually pretty terrible timelinewise! I mean, I don't believe that the kids were ONLY together for three months, e.g. a summer, probably that's them summarizing what seemed like one big happy half-year period into the summer they spent together. But according to the novel they spent an entire year together except for a summer! The novels start with Lelouch and Nunnally arriving in like September and then shit going down in like the April after, so there is no summer there whatsoever. It's just sad.
ANYWAY, to answer the question: There isn't CONCRETE canon, but we do have a couple of short scenes that take place in flashback. There's a scene where the kids are walking through some terribly decimated area and Lelouch is carrying Nunnally while Suzaku is extremely upset. Then there's the scene where the kids are going their separate ways. It's reasonable to assume (especially since Suzaku is in his pink fluffy kid clothes) that the first scene takes place before his father's death, just after some first strike of war -- they say that they're moving to another Kururugi house, so it's possible that the place where they were staying has been attacked, and they're heading to wherever Genbu is. (Possibly Suzaku went straight for the Britannians when he realized there was an attack, and then they had to head to the safe zone alone?) Suzaku gets his first real sense of what this war means, and how horrible it is, and he gets back to the shrine and confronts Genbu, where he realizes that [choose one or more: Genbu means to off the royal kids and engage in all-out war; Genbu means to set Japan to war and then sell them out and retire to China; Genbu means to fight in a war because he's a jackass] and then stabs him in a fit of rage. Thereafter I believe (although again, no canon) Kirihara would start spreading the lie about Genbu immediately upon learning what happened to him, and no more than a week later the war is over and the kids go their separate ways -- Suzaku to a military base where some kin will be taking care of him, and Lelouch and Nunnally to the Ashfords. Suzaku in this scene is wearing more "adult" clothes, torn jeans and some drab green t-shirt, and he is very obviously still deeply affected by what he did, and hasn't yet managed to block it out the way he does with enough time.
A lot of that is supposition, but I hope it helps?
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ANYWAY, to answer the question: There isn't CONCRETE canon, but we do have a couple of short scenes that take place in flashback. There's a scene where the kids are walking through some terribly decimated area and Lelouch is carrying Nunnally while Suzaku is extremely upset. Then there's the scene where the kids are going their separate ways. It's reasonable to assume (especially since Suzaku is in his pink fluffy kid clothes) that the first scene takes place before his father's death, just after some first strike of war -- they say that they're moving to another Kururugi house, so it's possible that the place where they were staying has been attacked, and they're heading to wherever Genbu is. (Possibly Suzaku went straight for the Britannians when he realized there was an attack, and then they had to head to the safe zone alone?) Suzaku gets his first real sense of what this war means, and how horrible it is, and he gets back to the shrine and confronts Genbu, where he realizes that [choose one or more: Genbu means to off the royal kids and engage in all-out war; Genbu means to set Japan to war and then sell them out and retire to China; Genbu means to fight in a war because he's a jackass] and then stabs him in a fit of rage. Thereafter I believe (although again, no canon) Kirihara would start spreading the lie about Genbu immediately upon learning what happened to him, and no more than a week later the war is over and the kids go their separate ways -- Suzaku to a military base where some kin will be taking care of him, and Lelouch and Nunnally to the Ashfords. Suzaku in this scene is wearing more "adult" clothes, torn jeans and some drab green t-shirt, and he is very obviously still deeply affected by what he did, and hasn't yet managed to block it out the way he does with enough time.
A lot of that is supposition, but I hope it helps?