J. Ryan Stradal Knihy

A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate, and the secrets of making world-class beer. Two sisters inherit a farm, but their father leaves everything to Helen, the younger daughter. While Helen builds a successful brewery with the motto "Drink lots. It's Blotz," her older sister Edith, despite her talent for baking award-winning pies, struggles to make a living and wonders how different her life could have been with a share of the farm's wealth. Helen's heart is as rigid as a steel keg, but she eventually finds herself in need of help, possibly from someone close to home. Meanwhile, Edith's granddaughter, Diana, understands that the real world demands resilience. She gets a chance to learn the IPA business from the ground up, which could change their fortunes and perhaps mend their fractured family. The story features a cast of lovable, humorous, quintessentially American characters striving to make their mark in a world that often works against them. In this deeply affecting family saga, resolution may take generations, but when it arrives, it surprises, moves, and delights us.

Have you met Eva Thorvald? To her father, a chef, she's a pint-sized recipe tester and the love of his life. To the chilli chowdown contestants of Cook County, Illinois, she's a fire-eating demon. To the fashionable foodie goddess of supper clubs, she's a wanton threat. She's an enigma, a secret ingredient that no one can figure out. Someday, Eva will surprise everyone. One by one, they tell their story; together, they tell Eva's. Joyful, quirky and heartwarming, this is a novel about the family you lose, the friends you make and the chance connections that make a life. On the day before her eleventh birthday, she's cultivating chilli peppers in her wardrobe like a pro. Abandoned by her mother, gangly and poor, Eva arms herself with the weapons of her unknown heritage: a kick-ass palate and a passion bordering on obsession. Over the years, her tastes grow, and so do her ambitions. One day Eva will be the greatest chef in the world. But along the way, the people she meets will shape her - and she, them - in ways unforgettable, riotous and profound. So she - for one - knows exactly who she is by the time her mother returns.

"This novel is the story of Mariel and Ned, 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"-- Provided by publisher