• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2022 December #1
  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. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

Iliana Regan is the Michelin-star chef and prior owner of Elizabeth restaurant, which she turned over to her employees in 2020 in order to run the Milkweed Inn bed and breakfast in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and experience a quieter life. In 2019 her debut memoir, Burn the Place, was longlisted for the National Book Award, the first time a food writer was listed since Julia Child won in the year Regan was born, 40 years ago. In addition to working as the chef and owner of Milkweed Inn, she recently earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.