The Lager Queen of Minnesota

Description

A National Bestseller!

“The perfect pick-me-up on a hot summer day.”
—Washington Post

“[A] charmer of a tale. . . Warm, witty and–like any good craft beer–complex, the saga delivers a subtly feminist and wholly life-affirming message.”
—People Magazine

A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer, from the bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

Two sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living. So she can’t help wondering what her life would have been like with even a portion of the farm money her sister kept for herself.

With the proceeds from the farm, Helen builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country, and makes their company motto ubiquitous: “Drink lots. It’s Blotz.” Where Edith has a heart as big as Minnesota, Helen’s is as rigid as a steel keg. Yet one day, Helen will find she needs some help herself, and she could find a potential savior close to home. . . if it’s not too late.

Meanwhile, Edith’s granddaughter, Diana, grows up knowing that the real world requires a tougher constitution than her grandmother possesses. She earns a shot at learning the IPA business from the ground up–will that change their fortunes forever, and perhaps reunite her splintered family?

Here we meet a cast of lovable, funny, quintessentially American characters eager to make their mark in a world that’s often stacked against them. In this deeply affecting family saga, resolution can take generations, but when it finally comes, we’re surprised, moved, and delighted.Praise for The Lager Queen of Minnesota:

“This charmer of a tale is a loving ode to the Midwest, the power of persistence and, perhaps above all, beer. . . Warm, witty and–like any good craft beer–complex, the saga delivers a subtly feminist and wholly life-affirming message.”
—People Magazine

“This generous spirit makes The Lager Queen of Minnesota a pleasure to read and the perfect pick-me-up on a hot summer day.”
—Washington Post

“Delightfully intoxicating. . . will make you smile with its droll humor, and its poignant moments will stop you to reread and confirm that they are really that good. In beer-geek slang, Stradal’s novel is ‘crushable’ — easygoing, well-balanced, super-drinkable with tons of flavor … and will make you go back for more.” 
—USA Today

“In Stradal’s follow-up to his best-selling debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, the Minnesota native’s energetic prose once again captures the optimism of the heartland.”
—Time Magazine

“Complex female characters, tragedies, and descriptions. . . will awaken all your senses. . . The book is The Lager Queen of Minnesota, but this release could cement J. Ryan Stradal as the King of Midwestern novels.” 
—Entertainment Weekly

“I read J. Ryan Stradal’s Kitchens of the Great Midwest on a flight. I buckled my seatbelt, opened the book and when I looked up again, the flight attendant was asking if I needed assistance getting off the plane. I didn’t, but now you know the spell this author can cast. He does it again with The Lager Queen of Minnesota.”
—Elisabeth Egan for The New York Times

“The fortunes and foibles of a brewery mirror the relationship between two sisters tussling over a family farm in this quirky, enchanting novel reminiscent of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres.” 
—O Magazine

“Everything about this book satisfies — from how the characters grow to how beer-making is described to Stradal’s hilarious assessment of lagers vs. IPAs. You may never drink a beer in ignorance again.” 
—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Wonderful. . . Stradal’s gift for getting the reader to invest in these lives is particularly profound.”
—The Chicago Tribune

“Delightful.” 
—New York Post

“Stradal’s second novel goes down easy. Imbued with Midwestern references and the importance of a ‘can-do’ attitude, this warm, witty novel willappeal to fans of Curtis Sittenfeld and Meg Wolitzer.” 
—Booklist (starred)

“This book tastes great, is quite filling and never bitter.” 
—BookPage (starred)

“Stradal’s writing is sharp and funny while still managing to treat each character with warmth and respect. . .  this is an ultimately hopeful and heartwarming story. . . . Readers will love watching these truly original characters overcome their challenges and take care of each other. An absolutely delightful read, perfect for a summer day with a good beer and a piece of pie.” 
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Refreshing. . .This story about how a family business succeeds with generations of strong and determined women at the helm makes for a sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always winning novel.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Brilliant. . . a love letter to the Midwest. . . it’s hard to put down not only because the storytelling is so seamless and the characters so relatable, but because the author’s delight in the written word is so contagious.” 
—Jen Sincero, #1 New York Times bestselling author of You Are a Badass

“Utterly charming. . .  Stradal loves and knows his territory, and his affection for the Midwest—with all its stubbornness, stoicism, long memories, readiness to provide aid and quiet pride in excellence–gleams on every page.” 
—Janet Fitch, bestselling author of The Revolution of Marina M.

“The Lager Queen of Minnesota is pure reading joy: warm, funny, informative, and full of heart. It is impossible not to root for Stradal’s characters, who are so vivid, and relatable that you will miss them every time you set the book down; indeed, if you set it down at all.” 
—Jonathan Evison, New York Times bestselling author of Lawn Boy

“Warm, whimsical, incredibly well-written and infused with Stradal’s signature sympathy for his characters–those everyday heroes we all know and love. . . a thorough delight, from beginning to end.”
—Nickolas Butler, internationally bestselling author of Shotgun Lovesongs 

“Full of the easy-to-love quaffability of a perfect ale, Stradal’s The Lager Queen of Minnesota will warm your heart. With empathy, love, wisdom and humor on every page, I wish I could go back for more.” 
–Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. The World

“The Lager Queen of Minnesota is the kind of book you think about all day, while at work, while speaking to someone else, while in line at the market. . . . I loved this book so much. I carried it with me like a talisman, marveling at the unique storytelling of J. Ryan Stradal, who knows his people so well. It’s a portrait of America, of place and land and neighborhood, and, of course, a celebration of beer.”
—Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon

“A book to make you laugh and cry and believe the best days of your life are still in front of you.”
—Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and FlyingJ. Ryan Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest and national bestsellers The Lager Queen of Minnesota and Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Granta, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, won the American Booksellers Association Indie’s Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year. His most recent novel, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, was published in 2023. Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in California with his family.AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LAGER QUEEN OF MINNESOTA
 
The Lager Queen of Minnesota is about two generations in a Midwestern family—starting on a farm, with two sisters who have no desire to be farmers. Helen, the younger, go-getter sister, wants more than anything else in the world to make beer. She finagles her way into taking over her husband’s family’s failing soda business and builds it into a thriving beer company by single-handedly inventing light beer. Her older sister, Edith, shares none of this grand ambition, even as her pies are named third-best in the state of Minnesota. Unfortunately, being a champion pie baker does not earn her a fortune, or even a good living. Enter Diana, Edith’s beloved granddaughter, who grows up trying to help Edith make ends meet—and in the most roundabout way possible, becomes obsessed with making a series of the best IPAs the Midwest has ever seen. But just as she is about to open her own brewpub, the fates converge and she is forced to turn to the unlikeliest cadre of amateur brewmasters imaginable—Edith’s cohort of grandmother friends—to save her brewery before it’s DOA.
 
J. Ryan Stradal has tapped into the zeitgeist and created a story that’s easy to love—in this case, doing for beer what his debut, Kitchens of the Midwest, did for food—about how a Midwestern family saves itself by making (and sometimes losing) a fortune in beer. Here, he gives us three female characters who are quirky, funny, and impossible to forget.
Most of all, he taps into the themes of American life today, as his people, like many other Americans in real life, make their way in a world that’s often stacked against them.
 
 
A CONVERSATION WITH J. RYAN STRADAL
 
1. How did the idea for The Lager Queen of Minnesota come to you? After the success of Kitchens of the Great Midwest, did you plan to continue to get inspiration from the food/drink world?
 
Before I was finished writing Kitchens of the Great Midwest, I’d become intrigued by the blossoming evolution of beer culture. No other food- or drink-related business industry I can think of has changed more in this century. While on my last book tour, I also kept noticing more and more independent breweries in the towns where I did events. One thing that struck me about most of these places was that, in spite of serving alcohol, they were true community gathering places, like the beer halls of Europe. More often than not, they were kid-friendly, pet-friendly, and/or venues for local musicians. In small towns, I’d also see young people, both at and behind the bar. At first, new breweries don’t usually sustain more than a handful of living-wage jobs, but it’s nice to see an industry of any size help retain and support young workers in a town that may otherwise lose them.
 
Also, unlike a lot of other food-related enterprises that emphasize the “local” and “craft” aspects of the foodie movement, beer is patently inclusive and affordable, and always has been. My characters are always cosmonauts of inquiry, and this time around, I was again compelled to create people who could help me learn more about something, and this time it had to be beer.
 
2. What kind of research did you do for your novel? Did anything surprising come up during your research?
 
I interviewed around three dozen brewers, brewery employees, beverage industry professionals, academics, and beer enthusiasts over the course of about three years, and visited countless breweries, sometimes querying the staff, sometimes silently taking it in. What surprised me the most wasn’t just the sheer number of new breweries and beer pubs, but their success rate. Smaller cities and towns seem willing and able to support local breweries, even if the beer being sold isn’t often similar to the lager the local customers grew up drinking. They’re all making something that you can’t exactly find anywhere else, and locals from all walks of life are helping sustain them. I love this.
 
3. What is it about the Midwest that continues to inspire your writing?
 
So much. It’s a complex place that defies easy categorization. My childhood and teenage years alone were so full of questions, contradictions, peculiar difficulties, and startling circumstances, I could write about the people that shaped me for the rest of my life and not cover a tenth of what inspires me about them.
 
Also, it’s not that some people on the coasts who write about Midwesterners get them wrong, per se, it’s just that they’re often reduced to stereotypes. I know how complex my family and friends in the Midwest are, and I try really hard to give my characters the sorts of problems that reveal a similar depth. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. I love my characters, and it breaks my heart to impose hardships on them.
 
4. What made you want to write about the business of beer from the female perspective? Was writing across multiple generations of women difficult?
 
One of the things I noticed while touring breweries was how often the staff, particularly the owners and brewmasters, looked like me—I met a ton of bearded white guys. This to me seemed like an incredibly boring story to tell. One of the imperatives of fiction, I believe, is to write the story you want to manifest, so I wrote about the kinds of brewers I’d like to have met more often.
 
Also, this story, like Kitchens of the Great Midwest, was written with one reader in mind—my mom. Although she passed away fifteen years ago and will never hold a book of mine in her hands, whenever I sit down to write, I do my best to evoke her and honor her. This often means female characters. Edith in particular has a heaping portion of my mom in her, and writing about her and for her keeps her alive in my heart.
 
5. How important is it to you to represent working-class families in your work?
 
One of the things I kept hearing on my book tour for Kitchens of the Great Midwest was how much my readers appreciated reading about working-class people. I hadn’t thought about it before, but it does seem like a lot of contemporary fiction is about rich or financially comfortable characters, and if the characters are poor, they’re often abjectly so. I was born into a struggling young working-class family—at one point when I was three, my parents had only $20 to their name—but they rebounded, each earned college degrees, they became homeowners, and were solidly middle-class by the time I was in high school.
 
I wanted to tell that story, both in terms of writing about people like my family and also about how, infused with hope and a lot of support, they improved their lives. They sure didn’t do it alone, and I’ve long wanted to write about people facing similar circumstances who ended up better than they started—and remained good people.
 
6. What do you find most interesting about contemporary “ beer culture”?
 
Despite the dizzying and recondite terminology that attends any “craft” culture, beer has remained inclusive. I wish it were more diverse (it’s slowly becoming so) but one of the barriers to entry is that starting a successful brewery is still mostly a rich person’s game. Very few breweries I visited were honestly bootstrapped operations; it seems typical (and perhaps necessary in many areas) that at least one of a brewery’s principal founders has substantial capital. Even though it’s ultimately a low-margin business, the start-up costs are often prohibitive, and various blue laws add to this cost and complexity.
 
That said, unlike with, say, wine or whiskey, an average person in Minnesota can easily afford the highest-rated, best-reviewed beer sold in their market. Beer snobs may crow about the ineluctable characteristics of certain virtually inaccessible beers, but great beer is affordable and accessible for virtually every drinker who’s interested. That’s one of the biggest things I love about it.
 
7. Do you have any favorite beers or breweries?
 
I’m a huge fan of Three Weavers, in Inglewood, California—a brewery owned and operated by women. They were tremendously helpful to me in researching this book. I love Spiral Brewery in my hometown of Hastings, Minnesota—they were also incredibly helpful, and three of the five principals there are women, as well. I also love the hard cider from Sweetland Orchard in Webster, Minnesota. The owners, Gretchen and Mike, were also deeply generous and knowledgeable in regard to family-run operations, alcohol distribution, and state alcohol laws.
 
Among breweries I haven’t yet visited, I’m a fan of the beers from Russian River, Dogfish Head, and Bell’s, but frankly, there’s not much I dislike, besides wheat beers (personal preference, not a judgment call). When visiting a new brewery, I’m likely to try whatever they have that I’ve never seen anywhere else, and if nothing applies, I’ll order a Citra-hopped IPA, amber ale, cream ale, or stout, depending on whether and what I’m eating. Frankly, I’m over the moon at how easy it is to find good beer now, just about anywhere in America. I hope the beer drinkers of future generations sustain this and don’t take it for granted.
 
 
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
 
1. The decision made by Helen and Edith’s father to leave the family farm entirely to Helen changes each sister’s life forever. Although she’s the beneficiary of that unfair decision, do you believe that Helen is a sympathetic character?
 
2. Before Diana was hired full-time at Heartlander Brewery, she was stealing from garages to help make ends meet. Did this criminal behavior affect how you felt about Diana as a character? If not, how was she able to redeem herself, and what contributed to her evolution?
 
3. Both of Stradal’s novels, The Lager Queen of Minnesota and Kitchens of the Great Midwest, are full of characters who’ve developed special, intimate relationships with food and drink. How would you describe Helen’s lifelong relationship with beer? How is it different from Diana’s? Or Edith’s?
 
4. The topic of loss appears throughout the book in both significant and subtle ways. The characters are often reckoning with their grief. Were there specific situations you found particularly relatable? Explain.
 
5. It’s becoming increasingly common in America for people, especially women, to work past retirement age, as Edith and some of her friends are doing. How would you describe Edith’s experience of working into her late seventies, and how does it contrast with that of the people you know who’ve continued to work late in life?
 
6. Although beer was invented by women, commercial brewing has been dominated by men. What does this book have to say about women in the industry, and the potential of women in the industry?
 
7. Each character’s attitude toward beer evolves during the course of the novel. Did this book change your own opinion of beer?
 
8. Edith’s talent for baking pies was a local secret for decades before she was “discovered.” In your opinion, was her wider exposure a positive development in her life? Do you know anyone with a similar skill or talent, and how do you think they’d feel about receiving a similar kind of wider exposure?

$20,000

 

Edith, 2003

It was July 5, 2003, and Edith Magnusson’s day hadn’t been too bad, so far. She’d just taken a strawberry-rhubarb pie from the oven, and was looking for her favorite tea towel, when she saw a grasshopper on the white trim of the windowsill. She didn’t like the idea of it sitting there, vulnerable, so she gently poked at the bug with the handle of a wooden spoon. As she’d hoped, it leapt into the yard, and vanished into safety. She felt herself exhale.

Then, she felt terrible. Maybe it just wanted a little vacation somewhere different, and she came along and ruined everything. Edith, for one, never once had been anywhere different, or ever truly had a break of any kind. Then again, she’d never intended to take one. Things were pretty decent where she was, and she didn’t ever see the point of bellyaching about the things she couldn’t change, especially in a world that never once ran a want ad looking for a complainer.

After all, she had a good job at St. Anthony-Waterside Nursing Home six blocks from her rented two-bedroom rambler in the central Minnesota town of New Stockholm. Edith also had her husband, Stanley, who at that moment was in a Peterbilt somewhere in South Dakota. She had an adult son, Eugene, who was just starting out as an independent distributor for an interesting company called LifeWell, which apparently sold quality household products direct to customers at low prices. She also had an adult daughter, Colleen, who’d gone to college, and even though she had to drop out, had done OK for herself. She married a handyman named Mark, who was a kind man, even if he didn’t go to church. They were raising Edith’s sole grandchild, a smart, curious girl named Diana, who was somehow almost a teenager already.

If all this wasn’t everything a person needed, she didn’t know what would be. It was true that she missed the farm where she grew up, and missed her parents for one reason and her sister for another reason, but it was no use dwelling on people and things that were in the past.

Edith was only sixty-four years old, but if she died right then, she would’ve felt the most important things a Minnesotan, woman or man, can feel at the end of their lives. She’d done what she could, and she was of use. She helped.

But life wasn’t done with her yet, and before long she’d come to regard everything that happened before July 5, 2003, like it was all just a pleasant song in an elevator. When the music stopped, the doors opened, and the light first fell in, it was in the form of her boss, a man she liked, running down the hallway at work, smiling, shouting her name, and waving a piece of newspaper in the air like a child.

 

Edith had worked as a dietary aide in the nursing home’s kitchen for thirty-seven years. Her coworkers were mostly hardworking, exhausted, and kind. The hallways smelled like baby powder sprinkled onto boiled green beans, which over the years had become kind of pleasant. Also, everyone agreed that the new boss, Brendan Fitzgerald, who had the benign charisma and calm authority of a TV meteorologist, was the best administrator theyÕd ever had. He also chain-smoked and only referred to residents by their room number, but at least he was always glad to see Edith, and that day he was the happiest she’d ever seen him since he won fifty bucks playing pull tabs.

Brendan, his slick black Reagan hair gleaming under the fluorescent lights, held out a copy of Twin City Talker, one of those hip newspapers for hip city people. Edith had flipped through an issue once, twenty years ago, and thought it was kind of different, so she never read it again. food issue, this cover read, and Brendan tore it open to a page somewhere in the middle.

“Did you hear about this?” he asked her.

 

She saw a list with the heading, best pies.

                1. Betty’s Pies, Two Harbors

                2. Keys Cafe and Bakery, St. Paul

                3. St. Anthony-Waterside Nursing Home, New Stockholm

“Our nursing home has the third-best pie in Minnesota,” he said, shaking the paper for emphasis.

“Well, that’s bizarre,” Edith said.

“No, it’s not. It’s because of number eight’s granddaughter. You’ve seen her here, with the pink hair,” Brendan said, pointing to the name in the byline. “That’s her. Ellen Jones. Staff food critic!”

“Neat. Well, I’d better get back to the kitchen,” Edith said.

“I’m going to get it framed and put in the lobby,” Brendan shouted. “That’s something, Edith! Third-best pie, in the whole entire state!”

Edith had been baking her own pies at work since her first year there, when she noticed that the apple cobbler-purchased pre-made from a contracted vendor-came back in unusually high quantities, some completely untouched, most just one or two bites smaller, some with one bite missing and a moist chunk of the stuff elsewhere on the plate. One resident, a wonderful old stick-in-the-mud named Donald Gustafson, had sent it back with a note reading make it stop.

When you see a man falling off a ladder above you, Edith believed, you don’t envision your arms breaking. You just hold them out.

 

Had she known that this decision would one day, decades later, change everything she loved about her life, she still would have done it, because the kitchen at St. Anthony-Waterside was responsible for the last desserts that the residents would likely ever have. If it were up to her, the people in this building would at least have the texture, the taste, or even just the smells of homemade pie once or twice a week, as heaven weaned them from the senses of this world. ItÕs the least a dang person can do.

And, as it turned out, it was indeed up to her. With the help of a few extra dollars from Brendan and the folks in charge before him (to help subsidize the ingredients) she’d been serving her homemade pies year-round for almost forty years now. Most residents felt that they were pretty decent, if a tad on the sweet side, not that they were complaining.

Edith turned her back to Brendan. “Well, let’s just hope it blows over.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t blow over! This is awesome! You should be proud!”

Brendan still wasn’t married and didn’t have kids, and as a man in his sixties, at least one of those two things probably was never going to happen, so more than ever, he lived for his job. This was only an unfortunate scenario for Edith when it made her life more complicated, like now.

 

Of course, Edith had been in the paper before. The New Stockholm Explainer ran pieces on Edith every eight years or so, with a headline that was something like pie lady still serving slices, along with a picture that always made her look confused and old. She didnÕt read the articles and never even kept copies for herself. When the phone rang at home around lunchtime the following day, she knew it would be Stanley, and she didnÕt even think sheÕd mention it to him.

The man on the other end of the phone wasn’t Stanley, though, it was his boss, The Other Tom Clyde, and she decided that she wouldn’t mention it to him either.

“Edith,” Mr. Clyde said. “There’s been an accident. Now, first, your husband’s OK, he just has a concussion.”

She knew he was OK. They’d been married for almost forty-four years exactly and she’d know it if he wasn’t alive somewhere. They could have sent him to Pluto and she’d know if he made it. But she also knew that this could happen sometime, and soon.

“What did he do now, Mr. Clyde?”

“Well, he drove a truckload of frozen hamburgers into the front of a Hardee’s in Sioux Falls. Normally they like their deliveries in the back, so I’m told.” Mr. Clyde shared his cousin Big Tom Clyde’s dry sense of humor.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No, thankfully. There’s some trash cans and picnic tables that wished they hadn’t met your husband’s truck, but that’s about it.” Mr. Clyde sounded a little sad. “I gotta be honest, I think he’s hauled his last load, ma’am.”

“Well, send him on home,” she told him, said good-bye, and hung up the phone.

It was noon, and outside, a basketball belonging to the neighbor kids tumbled into her yard, reminding her of high school. A mayfly beat its papery body against the screen door, delighted to be anywhere. And now, Edith was alone in her home kitchen, slicing fruit, and waiting for her life to change, once again.

 

The next day, she took Stanley to see Dr. Nebel. En route, Stanley proudly announced that he’d been to Dr. Nebel only once the last five years, as if his ignorance was proof of his perfect health. Only once, despite the fact that they were members of the same Elks Club. Who knows how they talked there, but in his small, simple office, Dr. Nebel did not BS around with her husband. “Early onset” was the only term he may have used purely out of kindness. While Stanley was sixty-five, it’s always too early for something like this, for both of them. He’d miss the pride heÕd felt in his ability to fix his own truck, he’d miss his CB handle-Charlie Brown, which he’d earned because of his perfectly round bald head-and he’d miss the smiling faces he’d gotten to know in places like Casper, Pierre, and Grand Junction.

Stanley would now be home every day, and although his Social Security wouldn’t be nearly as much as his paycheck was, with some trimming, they’d get by, if no emergencies or surprises happened. They used to live next door to a fireman who said that he prayed every night for tomorrow to be boring, and she knew exactly how he felt.

That evening at St. Anthony-Waterside, there were four guests in the dining room, about three more than usual for a weekday, but nothing alarming. It simply meant that she had to cut both of the pies she’d made into ten slices, which she hated to do.

Clarence Jones in #8 was one of the residents who had regular guests. His granddaughter Mandy, a pleasant young nurse who wore her scrubs all of the time, had brought her two-year-old son, Zach. With his big eyes and slick hair, he looked like a toddler version of Ugarte from Casablanca.

“Congrats on making the list in the Talker,” Mandy said, even though it was her own little sister, Ellen, who wrote it.

“I’m relieved that nobody seems to have paid it any attention,” Edith replied, and turned to Clarence, eager to change the subject. “Isn’t it good to see your great-grandson?”

“The kid’s a commie pinko,” Clarence frowned. He was a tad less pleasant than most of the other residents, but God likes all kinds, and Edith sure tried to as well.

“My grandpa’s just mad because he gave my son a bag of gumdrops, and Zach gave them all away already,” said Mandy.

“These schmucks don’t need ’em. And you know what else is a problem?” Clarence asked, now staring at Edith. “Your slices are getting too small. If I’m going to keep living, I want bigger servings of pie.”

“Same,” said Amelia Burch, who, at ninety-nine, was the oldest person in the entire county, and so far as Edith was aware, still ate everything, except for pork, white bread, and French fries.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Edith said, looking over the shining, empty dessert plates in the dining room.

 

The next day, Edith realized that she was running low on pie ingredients quicker than usual; she knew she should build up the nerve to ask Brendan for more again, but first, she had to demonstrate that sheÕd done everything she could with what she had. Anyway, their twelve-year-old granddaughter, Diana, would be coming up from Hastings that weekend, so Edith had something more pressing to prepare for. It was a tradition that every year, Diana spent a week with her grandparents right before school started. The difference now is that Stanley would be home with her all day, every day, for the first time ever.

From the kitchen, she saw her husband shuffle toward the door, and pull it open with the brisk, blind excitement of a little kid on Christmas.

“I just thought I heard a car,” he said, and took a moment to stare out into the empty driveway, as if he could will Colleen’s old blue Dodge Omni into materializing.

 

When Diana finally arrived, Stanley took her out for Shirley Temples at the Elks Club, bought slices of cheddar cheese pizza at Sven Larsen’s new restaurant, The Pizza Man, and over dinner, suggested that they visit that buggy oxbow lake near St. Anthony-Waterside and feed the ducks, if she hadn’t already outgrown that kind of thing.

“No, I still like ducks, Grandpa,” Diana said, and even if she was indulging them, it was kind of her to extend her childhood for their benefit. When she was little, she was perfectly happy just playing with a pie tin full of orphaned keys and dice, or standing in the hall, staring at the painting of the farmhouse with a different family member in each window, coming up with names for each one. Those days were long gone. Now, it was clear that the highlight of her visit was when she and Stanley went to the video store.

Stanley liked sci-fi, and Diana was evidently now into emotional adult dramas, so, judging by the titles on the spines of the DVD boxes, this made for some unusual double features: Driving Miss Daisy and Krull. Blade Runner and Steel Magnolias. Terms of Endearment and eXistenZ. As far as Edith knew, they would watch the movies back-to-back, and would sit patiently through the other person’s choice of entertainment.

Starting around that time, though, her sweet, quiet husband wasn’t the same. Before the Hardee’s incident, he’d seemed mostly himself, just like two or three petals had been plucked from a bouquet. After he was forced to retire, it seemed like there were entire flowers missing. And now, most of the week, he’d be taking care of their only grandchild, alone.

It could’ve been much worse, but there were issues. On the Tuesday of Diana’s visit, he took a fresh loaf of bread out of the oven and fed it to the ducks. Later, he tried to make canned chili in a pot on the stove and forgot about it until the smoke alarm went off. On Thursday he walked Diana to George Schmidt’s used car lot, where he tried to put money down on a used Cadillac Eldorado. Luckily, an employee there who knew them from church called Edith at work, and she ran over and put the kibosh on the whole thing.

US

Additional information

Weight	10 oz
Dimensions	0.7000 × 5.0000 × 7.7000 in
Imprint	Penguin Books
ISBN-13	09780399563065
ISBN-10	0399563067
Author	J. Ryan Stradal
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC019000, FIC044000
Subjects	beach reads for women, family stories, book club recommendations, gifts for her, family saga, family business, books for women best sellers, best friend gifts, sister gifts, literary fiction, minnesota gifts, kitchens of the great midwest, Minnesota stories, Books about food, American stories, the logger queen of minnesota, j, beer brewing gifts, Summer reads, family, Food, FIC019000, minnesota, gifts for mom, FIC044000, beach reads, queens, relationships, gifts for women, beer, foodie gifts, food books, beer brewing, beer books, beer gifts
Format	General Trade