An \u201cabsolutely transformative\u201d (<\/b>People<\/i><\/b>) culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family\u2014sustenance and survival\u2014from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cBeautifully written, heartbreaking and hopeful.\u201d\u2014Ruth Reichl,\u00a0<\/b>New York Times<\/i><\/b>\u00a0bestselling author of\u00a0<\/b>The Paris Novel<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
When you\u2019re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.<\/i><\/p>\n
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\u2019s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her baba Sarah\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
How to Share an Egg\u00a0<\/i>is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n