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A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty
by Bonny Reichert
A moving culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family—sustenance and survival—from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
When you're raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.
Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father's near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on.
Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Stepping into the kitchen to connect her past with her future, the author recounts the defining moments of her life in a poignant tale of scarcity and plenty: her colorful childhood in the restaurant business, the crumbling of her first marriage and the intensity of young motherhood, her decision to become a chef, and that life-altering visit to Poland. Whether it's the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her baba Sarah's elbow, the creamy vichyssoise she taught herself to cook in her tiny student apartment, or the brown butter eggs her father, now 93, still scrambles for her whenever she needs comfort, cuisine is both an anchor and an identity; a source of joy and a signifier of survival.
How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman's search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother, and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done? This moving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.
"Journalist and chef Reichert debuts with a mesmerizing memoir about grappling with depression and growing up as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor...Reichert weaves a rich narrative tapestry that traces her journey toward self-knowledge in luminous prose. Nimble and nourishing, this is not to be missed." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This often harrowing but ultimately life-affirming tale of family bonds, food, and love will touch even the most hardened of readers." —Booklist (starred review)
"Bonny Reichert's stunning memoir is proof of the power of hope in the face of epigenetic sorrow, and how the human soul and spirit hew inexorably to healing, sustenance, and life. The need to sustain oneself and one's loved ones is pervasive here, and Reichert's ability to weave together a seamless story about food, love, and withering tragedy is masterful. I was captivated." —Elissa Altman, author of Motherland
"How to Share an Egg is a beautiful, multilayered memoir taking the reader on a touching journey of discovery. In a world where so many things separate us, Reichert binds us together with a delicately woven braid of family, culture, and food." —Jane Bertch, author of The French Ingredient
"From the very first page, I knew I'd love this book. How to Share an Egg is saturated with love and anguish, every chapter rich with emotion and detail. The warmth and honesty are so engaging, making this book truly captivating. And oh—the food! Each meal is a feast to devour, every bit as much as the prose." —Lucy Adlington, New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmakers of Auschwitz
This information about How to Share an Egg was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Bonny Reichert is a National Magazine Award–winning journalist. She has been an editor at Today's Parent and Chatelaine magazines and a columnist and regular contributor to The Globe and Mail newspaper. Bonny was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and lives in Toronto with her husband, Michael, and little dog, Bruno. Her three almost-adult children come and go. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction and teaches writing at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies and the University of King's College in Halifax. In 2022, an excerpt of How to Share an Egg won the Dave Greber Book Award for social justice writing.
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