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    The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel
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    The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel
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    The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel

    Written by Peggy Lampman

    Narrated by Angela Dawe

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Betting on the city of Detroit's eventual comeback, cousins Addie and Samantha decide to risk it all on an affordable new house and a culinary career that starts with renovating a vintage diner in a depressed area of town. There's just one little snag in their vision.

    Angus, a weary, beloved local, is strongly opposed to his neighborhood's gentrification—and his concerns reflect the suspicion of the community. Shocked by their reception, Addie and Samantha begin to have second thoughts.

    As the long hours, problematic love interests, and underhanded pressures mount, the two women find themselves increasingly at odds, and soon their problems threaten everything they've worked for. If they are going to realize their dreams, Addie and Samantha must focus on rebuilding their relationship. But will the neighborhood open their hearts to welcome them home?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 10, 2017
    ISBN9781543617801
    Unavailable
    The Welcome Home Diner: A Novel

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    Reviews for The Welcome Home Diner

    4/5

    9 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Warning: Don't read this book if you are hungry or else have something close to your reading spot to snack on. Actually even if you aren't hungry, you will be after you read about the wonderful food served at the diner. Added bonus - recipes at the end of the book on how to make some of the wonderful food from the diner!I loved this book for several reasons - first, the personal reason. I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit (on the east side) and went to college in the city so Detroit is a special place to me. I want to see it come back to being the great city that it once was and the revitalization of Detroit is one of the underlying themes of this book. Second, I love to read books that weave current issues of the day into it and this one does a great job of doing just that. The author writes about human trafficking, racial issues, drugs and white flight from the city to the suburbs among other topics. Third, I loved the characters in this novel. Two cousins buy an old gutted out diner in the city and try to become part of the neighborhood. They are met with resistance from the old time residents, no matter how hard they try but they keep trying. Not only are Addie and Samantha fantastic main characters but they are surrounded by great secondary characters who also work at the diner. And lastly, as mentioned earlier, the descriptions of the food served at the diner are awesome.This is a fantastic well written book about two women who are trying to do their part to make not only their neighborhood but also a beautiful city come back to life again. I loved it.Thanks to the author and netgalley for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.
    • 4/5
      Food and family equal love, and The Welcome Home Diner in Detroit definitely oozes with love.Addie and Sam's grandmother taught them the love of and joy of making fresh food, and they both knew that opening a diner was something they were destined for.Opening a diner in the new Detroit was a challenge, but a challenge that was proving to be very fruitful. The fresh food offered at the diner drew in the crowds along with great reviews from food bloggers. The only problem was the neighbors and specifically the next door neighbor to the restaurant.The next door neighbor was grumpy and reluctant for the change, and the entire neighborhood was not happy about rebuilding that area.We follow the cousins through the ups and downs of owning the restaurant as well as the ups and downs of their once-close relationship.The descriptions were so beautifully detailed in THE WELCOME HOME DINER you could see the butter dripping down the sides of the pancakes and smell the delicious soups and sandwiches being served.The descriptions also allowed you to experience the characters' feelings for each other, their passion for food, and for Detroit. You will also experience the kindness and love for mankind.I enjoyed the banter between the characters and the uplifting feeling THE WELCOME HOME DINER gave off. The cover ITSELF is very welcoming.If you are a fan of food and love, THE WELCOME HOME DINER fits the bill. I truly enjoyed the book and the characters, but felt it could have been shortened a bit. 4/5This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the author and NetGalley in return for an honest review. I also reviewed this book for the GREAT THOUGHT'S NINJA REVIEW TEAM.
    • 3/5
      When we lived in suburban Detroit, I organized an annual service day for my alma mater. One year we joined an organization that planted trees in the inner city. As we dug holes and planted new trees to replace those dead from disease, several people came out of their homes and questioned us about what we were doing. Most were suspicious of our motives and some wanted us to stop, at least until we mentioned that the minister of a local church had volunteered to water all the trees in hopes of helping them root and survive. It was a reaction I'd never expected to encounter. After all, we were just trying to help make their neighborhood more beautiful and replace what they had lost long ago. Trees couldn't possibly be political, could they? We moved away from Detroit in 2008 as the housing bubble was bursting in a spectacular way all across the US and so I don't know whether our trees survived or even whether the inhabitants of the neighborhood itself are still there or if they were among those so hard hit that their homes were torn down and they were displaced. What wasn't lost on me though was the idea that what one person sees as a gift of good can be seen otherwise by the people on the receiving end. This is just one of the issues addressed in Peggy Lampman's newest novel, The Welcome Home Diner but one that resonated with me for sure.Addie and Sam Jaworski are cousins who have bought both a home and a diner in a depressed area of Detroit. They've realized their dream of refurbishing the diner and opening a restaurant focused on the cuisine that means the most to them, the foods they learned to make in childhood with their Polish Babcia and the comforting soul food of their diverse, local staff. They have a kitchen garden behind the diner to supply many of their vegetables and they use local artisans and purveyors for the rest of their supplies. Despite their outreach to the neighborhood and even as they become more successful professionally, they are avoided by the neighbors and patronized mainly by suburban hipsters, a point which continually nags at them, and which runs counter to their vision. Initially things seem to be mostly going well personally and improving professionally for the two women but there start to be cracks in their lives. Addie's boyfriend can't commit to marriage and family, two things she wants more than anything, and Sam's boyfriend has plans that could change everything for the two cousins. A troll has started posting negative and untrue comments about the diner and they are faced with threats by a shady linen company. And the cousins, who not only work together but have bought a fixer upper home together, have a relationship damaging fight. Only the community they have created around them can buoy them up and get them through all of these difficulties and more.The narrative flips from Addie to Sam so that each woman has a voice for the reader and so that her internal thoughts and pressures can help explain all of the decisions, good and bad that she makes. Occasionally it is difficult to determine who the focus is on, especially when the character in question is ruminating over a problem both women share. Sam and Addie, although growing up under very different circumstances, both need to discover their own self-worth over the course of the novel. They are so focused on the stresses of running the diner and of their respective love lives that they either don't know or they lose sight of their own identity and truth. Their fumbling makes them feel terribly real and familiar. The secondary characters are generally a delightful bunch (although there are one or two who are more irritating and problematic than delightful). Like the city itself resurfacing from the economic disasters of the past, the secondary characters, and in many ways, Sam and Addie too, are looking for a second chance, a personal revitalization if you will. The stresses of owning a small restaurant and the difficulty of having it truly be a welcome home in the midst of a neighborhood that views them with suspicion is very well depicted here. Addie and Sam do want to be good community partners but it's not as easy and immediately appreciated as they had assumed. The novel is full of weighty plot lines, many of which are quite secondary. Lampman takes on a veritable cornucopia of issues in this novel: gentrification, sex trafficking, family, both created and chosen, race, the farm to table movement, rehabilitating convicts, second chances, and forgiveness. There is a clear love of food here with delectable passages about cooking and ingredients that will make any reader's mouth water and there are recipes at the end for any cooks looking to make their own Polish soul food fusions. There's a lot to think about in the pages of the novel and readers of women's fiction as well as foodies and those interested in the rebirth of Detroit will certainly enjoy the book.
    • 4/5
      Peggy Lampman previously owned a specialty food store, The Back Alley Gourmet, in her college town of Ann Arbor before writing a weekly food column for the Ann Arbor News. Now she writes a food blog, dinnerfeed.com and all this led her to write two novels- The Promise Kitchen (2016) and this year's The Welcome Home Diner.Addie and Sam, two cousins from Birmingham, Alabama, move to Detroit to open a diner. Detroit has been through some rough times, and the cousins hope to help resusitate an area of Detroit with their neighborhood diner.They got their love of cooking from their Babcia, their Polish grandmother. She inspired them, and her photo hangs up in a corner of the diner to remind them of how they got here. Addie and Sam share a two-story house- Addie lives upstairs with her boyfriend David and they seem very happy and well-suited to each other.Addie is the organizer and planner, she handles the ordering, and the paperwork, along with the front of the house issues. She sees a future for her and David, marriage and children, but David is happy with things the way they are.Sam runs the kitchen, she is beautiful and a great cook and after getting out of a bad relationship in New York, she is trying to find her footing again with men. Meanwhile, she has Hero, her dog who watches over her.The Welcome Home Diner has money issues, as most new businesses do. They don't have much money leftover after payroll and food costs, but Addie and Sam are committed to making the diner work, sacrificing much to make it successful.They draw a decent crowd from the young professionals in the area, but they are perplexed as to why the neighborhood residents do not eat at the diner. Their prices are reasonable, the food is delicious, and there isn't another comparable restaurant in the neighborhood.In addition, there is a person giving them bad and inaccurate Yelp reviews, a next door neighbor who is openly hostile to them, and a business vendor who is menacing them.I loved the characters in The Welcome Home Diner. Along with Addie and Sam, they have an interesting staff- Braydon, who started with them on day one and has worked his way up to floor manager, Quiche, a cook who brings her smart young daughter Sun Beam to work with her, and Sylvia, a young woman rescued from sex traffickers whom Addie and Sam take under their wing.Having owned a restaurant with my husband, I found The Welcome Home Diner fascinating. Lampman gets so much right, such as the stress, the hard, physical work and the comraderie of the team effort. You get a great look at the day-to-day grind of running a restaurant.The setting of Detroit is a character as well. We get a real feel for what a once-vibrant city is now going through, the struggles of the residents to get back on their feet. Some people appreciate the efforts of newcomers investing in their city, others fear the gentrification and the strangers moving into their neighborhoods.I recommend The Welcome Home Diner for those who like foodie fiction, and family stories mixed with serious issues and there are even some recipes at the end, like Lamb Burger Sliders with Tzatziki and Beetroot Relish, and Sylvia's Heartbreakers, which are similiar to the amazing Levain's Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies, famous in NYC (and my guilty pleasure).
    • 4/5
      MY REVIEW OF "THE WELCOME HOME DINER" BY  PEGGY LAMPMANI appreciate some of the relevant topics in "The Welcome Home Diner" by Peggy Lampman. The genre for this novel is Women's Fiction.  The story takes place in a vintage diner in a depressed area of Detroit.The author writes this in a current timeline, only going back to clarify and describe something relevant to the characters or story.The author describes some of her characters as dysfunctional., quirky and colorful. The characters are diverse and some are complicated and complex as dictated by the circumstances.  Cousins Addie and Samantha partner together to buy an old  house in need of much renovation. and old diner and name it "The Welcome Home Diner" Their dream  is to unify and help rebuild the depressed town in Detroit. Some of the neighbors are less than happy to see the neighborhood change. They encounter obstacles and problems.For those of you who love great recipes, the author provides most of the recipes described in the story at the back of the book for you.I appreciate that the author brings up topics such as human sex trafficking, kidnapping, rescue dogs, unifying and building, and integration of a community.The author also discusses the importance of family, friendship, loyalty, love, hope and faith.  I received a copy of this ARC for my honest review. For those who love delicious food and recipes, you will appreciate this book.