"A Wonderful Story of Family"
Reviewed by Susan Dyer
Posted March 9, 2024
Women's Fiction Contemporary | Saga
I had no idea what to expect when I started reading THE FUNERAL LADIES OF ELLERIE COUNTY, but I loved every minute of it. I was instantly invested in these wonderful characters and they kept me very surprised. Claire Swinarski shows how much she knows about Wisconsin with this wonderful story as she describes living there perfectly. I lived in Wisconsin for six years and while reading THE FUNERAL LADIES OF ELLERIE COUNTY, I felt like I was right back in that beautiful state.
Esther Larson has been living her lake life and cooking for funerals at her church for seventy years. She is taken by a scammer on the internet and sends Hazel thirty thousand dollars. She believes the person she knows as Hazel is a single mom with a young child and she, being the caring person she is, doesn't hesitate to send the money. Now Esther is receiving many letters from her bank and she is worried she is going to lose her family home. Esther’s granddaughter, Iris is falling in love with Cooper, the son of a TV chef. Cooper suffers from PTSD while working as an EMT during a tragic shooting. His family is renting her home while in the Northwoods for Ivan's wife's funeral. His father has a huge secret that will break the reader's heart. THE FUNERAL LADIES OF ELLERIE COUNTY is going to put the reader's emotions on a crazy rollercoaster ride just like it did to me. One minute, I was laughing out loud and the next I was trying to swallow the lump in my throat.
THE FUNERAL LADIES OF ELLERIE COUNTY is the first time I've read Claire Swinarski, but it won't be the last. This story is so heartwarming and unforgettable. It is almost as if Claire wrote the story just for me. Now I am on the hunt for her backlist books and that makes me very excited. I was sad when THE FUNERAL LADIES OF ELLERIE COUNTY ended because I wasn't ready to leave my new lake friends. The sense of community and small-town America is appealing to me and left me missing the small towns that I have lived in. I strongly recommend THE FUNERAL LADIES OF ELLERIE COUNTY to anyone who likes a great contemporary family story that you will have a hard time putting down.
SUMMARY
Armed with a Crock-Pot and a pile of recipes, a grandmother, her granddaughter, and a mysterious young man work to bring a community together in this uplifting novel for readers of The Chicken Sisters.
Esther Larson has been cooking for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for seventy years. Known locally as the “funeral ladies,” she and her cohort have worked hard to keep the mourners of Ellerie County fed—it is her firm belief that there is very little a warm casserole and a piece of cherry pie can’t fix. But, after falling for an internet scam that puts her home at risk, the proud Larson family matriarch is the one in need of help these days.
Iris, Esther’s whip-smart Gen Z granddaughter, would do anything for her family and her community. As she watches her friends and family move out of their lakeside town onto bigger and better things, Iris wonders why she feels so left behind in the place she is desperate to make her home. But when Cooper Welsh shows up, she finally starts to feel like she’s found the missing piece of her puzzle.
Cooper is dealing with becoming a legal guardian to his younger half-sister after his beloved stepmother dies. While their celebrity-chef father is focused on his booming career and top-ranked television show, Cooper is still hurting from a public tragedy he witnessed last year as a paramedic and finding it hard to cope. With Iris in the gorgeous Ellerie County, though, he hopes he might finally find the home he’s been looking for.
It doesn’t seem like a community cookbook could possibly solve their problems, especially one where casseroles have their own section and cream of chicken soup mix is the most frequently used ingredient. But when you mix the can-do spirit of Midwestern grandmothers with the stubborn hope of a boy raised by food plus a dash of long-awaited forgiveness—things might just turn out okay.
Includes Recipes
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