Lunch Ladies
A story of love, loss, redemption...and a parade.
by Jodi Thompson Carr
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Pub Date 1 Dec 2024 | Archive Date 7 Jan 2025
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Description
If you loved Remarkably Bright Creatures, If We're Being Honest, or Lessons in Chemistry then come meet the lunch ladies; they'll warm your heart, but they may also break it.
Warm, witty, and refreshingly original, this is an exquisitely written story of love, loss, redemption...and a parade.
A TREASURE OF BOOK CLUB FICTION. Lunch Ladies captures time and place with laugh-out-loud humor, and reach-for-a-tissue heartache, as the people of Hanley, Minnesota - living and dead - come together for a community celebration.
It's 1976 and there's a bicentennial parade in the works. Is this a task for the school district's lunch ladies? Their answer would be "no." So how is it that Crystal, Coralene, and Sheila find themselves crafting food stands to feed parade goers, come the Fourth of July?
Crystal has other things to do: matching lonely travelers from the newspaper obituaries with kind souls still living. Coralene doesn't need this nonsense. She has a home and family, and a nephew she must save before it's too late. Is it already too late for Sheila? Her safe harbor is a booth at Denny's on Friday nights, with the only person who might help her move beyond her past.
In language both lyrical and stark, Lunch Ladies serves up a poignant, tender, and often hilarious view of the flawed and fascinating citizens of Hanley. The novel is peppered with wit and insight, as it captures the absurdities of family and community life, while revealing the humanity of those who've been lost, or left behind.
This compelling debut has it all.
“…With wonderfully complex characters…this is a truly well-written, reflective novel perfect for a book club or a rainy Sunday morning.” Independent Book Review
Advance Praise
“From Friday night dinners at Denny’s to matchmaking with obituaries, Lunch Ladies will keep readers entertained from cover to cover. Rich with witty dialogue and the ups and downs that come with friends and family, this is a wonderful book that many will enjoy. Kudos to author Jodi Thompson Carr for creating a masterpiece full of emotion, love, warmth, and life.” — Kristi Elizabeth, Seattle Book Review
“…Crystal, Coralene, and Sheila are all wonderfully complex characters with fully fleshed out voices that make switching between their perspectives easy to follow. It’s even easier to root for them…The book gives middle-aged women a place to be themselves, odd or sad or tragic as they may be. It’s a somber book…but it’s a welcome, soft kind of somber. Not accusatory or devastating, but a gentle undercurrent…Lunch Ladies radiates warmth." - Independent Book Review
“A sweet story that centers around a group of lunch ladies, their friends, and their families, this is a book that readers will find dear to their hearts. Lunch Ladies will make you laugh, cry, and cheer with its quirky characters. This is a beautifully written novel about relationships, friendships, togetherness, and loneliness.” - Kathryn Dare, Chicago Book Review
“…a heartwarming story that captures relationships, growth, and tragedy in an enlightening atmosphere readers will find engrossing. Especially notable are the disparate paths each woman chooses in her life, and how these are influenced by the attitudes of and encounters with others...Added value comes in the form of wry humor injected throughout the story.” - Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review
“This plunge into the friendships and inner thoughts of a caste of women who usually remain 'unseen' and 'unheard'…is heartfelt, and wrought with sensitivity, tragedy, and humor…the insights that lucky readers gain into the intimate details of overlooked working-class women's souls are as dynamic, dramatic, and important as any characters peopling the middle- and upper-class fictional fare on the market today. - Carol Dawson, author of The Mother-in-Law Diaries, Body of Knowledge, The Waking Spell, and Meeting the Minotaur
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9316692460102 |
| PRICE | US$3.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 363 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
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