Review by Booklist Review
A Michelin starred chef turned denizen of Hiawatha National Forest, Regan (Burn the Place, 2019) returned to nature for a fresh start during the pandemic. Here, she brings the reader into the physical and metaphorical thicket with an unpretentious style, capturing what it's like to forage not only for mushrooms and berries, but for meaning in one's early forties. Regan's struggles with alcoholism and infertility are laced throughout a narrative that moves between her Indiana childhood and the present day in the Michigan forest, where the author and her wife run the steadily booked Milkweed Inn. The prose captures the rough edges of a life built on farmsteading, finding unexpected beauty. Readers won't soon forget the image of Regan's great-grandmother bloodletting a duck for czarnina and will practically hear the sound of black walnuts cracking under the tires of the family Oldsmobile. In this heartfelt ode to the natural world, Regan lets the reader into her reality, exposing the messiness, beauty, and inescapable connection to the good, the bad, and the ugly that exists in food.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In her poignant memoir, chef Regan (Burn the Place: A Memoir) traces her path from growing up on a farm in Indiana to founding a bed and breakfast in northern Michigan. As the youngest of four sisters, Regan foraged in the woods for food, and knew from an early age that she didn't identify as a girl: "I always thought I was a boy, even before Dad ever said I was," she writes. In 2019, she opened the Milkweed Inn with her wife, Anna, and the business allowed her to honor her upbringing and flex her creativity. Regan's lyrical prose evokes the natural world; recalling family dynamics during her childhood, she describes her mom as "the kitchen," her dad as "the forest," and herself as "the sheep's head--wily, twisting--and the honey mushroom--stretching, symbiotic." She also vividly describes time spent in the forest ("The echo through the trees is like a conch shell over your ear"), but the narrative excels when Regan recalls the grief she felt over the loss of her older sister, who died in jail at the age of 39: "Grief may be the worst thing I've ever experienced and at the same time the only thing that keeps me going." Readers will be moved. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Regan's (Burn the Place) second memoir focuses on her relationship with the natural world. Hailing from a long line of foragers, she shares stories of her childhood homesteading on a farm in rural Indiana. She juxtaposes memories of her family with the current phase of her career, having left her Michelin-starred restaurant behind for the remote forests of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. There, she and her wife opened the Milkweed Inn, a bed-and-breakfast in the Hiawatha National Forest. Regan charts the B&B's operating challenges with the onset of COVID and her own relapse into addiction. In this self-narrated audio memoir, Regan's depictions of nature are evocative. Her detailed descriptions of the land, the food she harvests, and the meals she creates illustrate her passion for the land. She also frankly discusses her complicated relationship with gender and sexuality, from wanting a male body as a child to her difficulties conceiving as an adult. VERDICT This memoir detailing Regan's relationship with her body, her family, and the world around her resonates with sincerity and passion.--Angel Caranna
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An acclaimed chef chronicles her experiences as a forager. In her second memoir, Regan, the author of Burn the Place, focuses on the stories from her past that have shaped her views of the world, particularly the natural world. Growing up on a homestead farm in rural Indiana, Regan spent much of her time foraging for mushrooms, berries, and herbs with her parents. As a child, she experienced gender dysphoria, and she writes about the importance of her parents' support. In 2019, Regan and her wife, Anna, opened the Milkweed Inn in a remote area of the Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in order to escape the grind of restaurant life in Chicago, where the author ran the acclaimed restaurant Elizabeth from 2012 to 2020. They live mostly off the grid, and Regan prepares meals for their guests using locally sourced items, mostly from her own foraging excursions, which take her far and wide in pursuit of good ingredients. "This forest has many microclimates," she writes, "and I'm astounded by the continuous surprises." Regan laments the destruction of much of the forest and animal habitats surrounding their home due to logging, stressing that national forests are not afforded the same protections as national parks. She also shares her desire to have children in order to pass on her "cravings for the land," and she writes about the couple's attempts to get pregnant. Throughout the memoir, Regan shares other worldviews and many life experiences, including her family's dark history of addiction, violence, fear, and obsession, shifting back and forth in time in a stream-of-consciousness manner. At times, the author's stories take on a surreal tone, especially in descriptions of reoccurring dreams and the offerings she makes to the "shape-shifting god of the forest" before foraging. An intimate, passionate, and fresh perspective on the natural world and our place within it. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
