THE FUNERAL LADIES OF ELLERIE COUNTY

Esther Larson and her cohort of friends have been cooking luncheons for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for 70 years.

As families mourned their loved ones, passed photos, told stories, and cried with each other, "the funeral ladies" showed up with platters of cookie bars and steaming bowls of shredded beef, ready to generously give the thing they'd been providing for years: food. When Cooper Welsh comes to town for his stepmother's funeral, accompanied by his estranged celebrity chef-father and his new ward, his teenaged half-sister, no one could have predicted how their lives would interweave with the locals in heartwarming ways. Meanwhile, Esther finds herself in a pickle when a fledgling internet friendship goes awry, and she is forced to accept the help of others for a change. In Ellerie County there's community support, there are family relationships, there's a love story that is anything but simple, and, of course, there's lots and lots of food. Claire Swinarski is the author of three middle-grade books and, now, one adult novel. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, Seventeen, Milwaukee Magazine, and many other publications. She lives in small town Wisconsin with her husband and three kids, where she writes books, wears babies, and wrangles bread dough.