First published 2025
Bonny Reichert spent years avoiding her father's Holocaust stories. The award-winning journalist knew he survived Auschwitz-Birkenau on potato peels and coffee grounds, but she never connected his past to her own relationship with food. A bowl of borscht in Warsaw changed everything. Reichert began tracing her culinary inheritance, from potato knishes learned at Baba Sarah's side to vichyssoise in her student apartment to the brown butter eggs her 93-year-old father still makes for comfort. She excavates the moments that shaped her: childhood in restaurants, divorce, early motherhood, culinary school, and that transformative Poland trip. Food becomes her lens for understanding scarcity and abundance, survival and identity. Reichert wrestles with a central question: do her personal struggles matter against the backdrop of her father's suffering? This memoir weaves together recipes and memories to explore how trauma and resilience pass between generations through the simple act of sharing meals.
Genres: holocaust, memoir, biography-memoir, family-drama, food-writing
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, poignant, reflective, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family-through-food, generational-healing, personal-discovery
Setting: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Warsaw, Poland
Period: Holocaust era, 20th-century, 21st-century
304 pages · Paperback · Ballantine Books
Content warnings: death