Bootleggers, Betrayal, & Barbecue

Darkwater Creek 1930

Folks in this Nebraska town had little to lose, thanks to Albert Hollingwood's criminal enterprises, but the soup is thinner now and times are harder.

Paul and Gracie Kohlberg run an auction house café, bootleg elderberry wine, and struggle to keep their farm. Paul’s in trouble too deep to confess, and Gracie will soon deliver a baby who will change their lives. Then Gracie’s bodacious sister Hazel shakes up the town, while fierce competition could close the café.

At Gracie’s Café, locals meet for gossip and homestyle cooking, but most of the dirt dished concerns Gracie’s broken family. When a mysterious man drifts in from Alabama, he ignites hope and a fragrant offering to reconcile the town.

Rich in Depression-era history, That Dish at Gracie’s Café attends to deep matters of the heart—as well as other appetites—in the fictional Republican River Valley town of Darkwater Creek, Nebraska.

Inspiring and entertaining, That Dish at Gracie’s Café turns a clear, good-natured eye on community, marriage, and family life, with their complex, traditional recipes for love, loyalty, gossip, greed, intolerance, and broken promises.

Seasoned with a literary style that is simultaneously colloquial and magical, this story will stimulate readers’ hunger for vivid, quirky places and characters. That Dish at Gracie’s Café also satisfies with its generous helpings of heartfelt laughter, peculiar justice, sudden mercy, homemade pie, and pit barbecue.