Editorial Content for Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
As a Minnesotan now living in a different state, I always look forward to a new novel by J. Ryan Stradal. Reading his books is like taking a trip back home and rediscovering aspects of the Land of 10,000 Lakes that I’d forgotten after being away for so long.
In the case of Stradal’s latest effort, that rediscovery is the phenomenon of the supper club, an Upper Midwest staple that offers couples and families refined dining and entertainment at affordable prices, often in areas frequented by the summer tourist crowd. Reading Stradal’s descriptions of the Lakeside Supper Club in fictional Bear Jaw Lake took me right back to summer evenings at a friend’s lake cabin in northern Minnesota. We’d trade in our swimsuits and flip-flops for slightly fancier togs and go out for an extremely filling dinner at the supper club in a nearby town.
"...an interwoven narrative that feels heartfelt and true, suffused with affection for this place and its people past and present. I can’t wait for my next trip back home to Stradal’s Minnesota."
As Mariel Prager reflects in the novel’s opening, “When she walked into a good one, she felt both welcome and somewhere out of time. The décor would be old-fashioned, the drinks would be strong, and the dining experience would evoke beloved memories, all for a pretty decent price.” Mariel should know. She grew up adoring her time spent with her grandparents at the Lakeside, even if her mom, Florence, had somewhat of a more complicated relationship with the place.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE LAKESIDE SUPPER CLUB opens in 1996, and Mariel is the de facto owner/manager of the Lakeside, where her husband Ned tends bar. Ned grew up as the oldest son of the Jorby’s restaurant dynasty, a chain of casual eateries with reliably boring food that steadily has crept across the Upper Midwest and put more than one supper club out of business already. But this tension in their marriage is only one of many stressors; as it turns out, it winds up least affecting their marital happiness.
The book moves backwards through time, to the moment when single mother Betty and her young daughter, Florence (who eventually becomes Mariel’s mom), broke. With no real prospects, they arrive at the Lakeside and are taken under the wing of Floyd, the supper club’s owner. Betty is generously given a tiny cabin and a job behind the bar, and Florence grows up there. But a series of betrayals across generations create rifts in these mother-daughter relationships. Then there’s the question of legacy, who owns the Lakeside, and what values are handed down between generations.
As mentioned earlier, few authors so palpably evoke the people and places of the Upper Midwest as Stradal does in his fiction. SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE LAKESIDE SUPPER CLUB continues that tradition, especially in its depictions of landscape and, of course, food. The novel is at times very funny, almost absurdly so, such as the comical showdown between Mariel and Florence that characterizes much of the book’s final third. It also has moments of profound sadness as characters contend with some of the most tragic circumstances imaginable and trace their recovery in very different ways.
Together, however, these elements create an interwoven narrative that feels heartfelt and true, suffused with affection for this place and its people past and present. I can’t wait for my next trip back home to Stradal’s Minnesota.
Teaser
Mariel Prager’s 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 her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed. Ned is also an heir --- to a chain of home-style diners --- and 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, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance.
Promo
Mariel Prager’s 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 her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed. Ned is also an heir --- to a chain of home-style diners --- and 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, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance.
About the Book
From New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal comes a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, 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 her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.
Ned is also an heir --- to a chain of home-style diners --- and while he doesn't have a head for business, 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, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?
In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone.
Audiobook available, read by Aspen Vincent
