Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner

“A candid story of desperate measures, explosive humor, and, ultimately, the sanity behind seeming madness. It teaches a new understanding of family love.” —Jo Radner, reviewer for the National Storytelling Network’s magazine

Family: comfort food or a recipe for disaster? Award-winning storyteller and performer Regi Carpenter brings her humor and honesty to print in Where There’s Smoke, There’s Dinner.

Regi is the youngest daughter in a family that pulsates with contradictions: religious and raucous, tender but terrible, unfortunate yet irrepressible. These honest tales—some hilarious, some heartbreaking—celebrate the glorious and gut-wrenching lives of four generations of Carpenters raised on the Saint Lawrence River in Clayton, New York. From teenagers struggling to find their identity to disabled veterans grappling with the aftermath of war and change to the complications and sweetness of love between family members, this collection of linked short stories holds the universal message that life’s difficulties are softened by love and fortitude . . . and family.

“Inventive, insightful, emotionally nuanced in the midst of deadpan humor; but more than that, here is a great, big-hearted embrace of the world.” —Loren Niemi, producer, Two Chairs Telling

“This book brings us to a place where we discover the eventual and abiding power of love over death. It is so very loving and affirming of total recovery from childhood and of the power of forgiveness that heals in two directions.” —Donald Davis, author of Tales from a Free-Range Childhood