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.