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.

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.

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.

A TREASURE OF BOOK CLUB FICTION

Lunch Ladies is a poignant, tender, and often hilarious view of the flawed and fascinating citizens of Hanley, Minnesota.  The voices of Crystal, Coralene, Sheila, and the people of Hanley - living and dead - are intertwined in a novel that vividly captures time and place as one town prepares for the bicentennial.