Fiction

"This is a perfect book."--Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Not That Bad

From the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them

Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband, Ned, is having an identity crisis; her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day; and her mother, Florence, is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she's been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in Mariel's family for decades, but it also caused a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.

Ned is also an heir--to a chain of home-style diners--and he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear. Can they find a way to rebuild their lives, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?

In this vanishing world of relish trays and brandy old-fashioneds, New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal has given us a story full of his signature winning, honest yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love and tragedy, hardship and hope--and what their legacy will be when they are gone.