Hey there, this is NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Glenn Weldon. There aren't as many supper clubs in the northern Midwest as there used to be. A supper club combines the family restaurant with a lodge or social organization. It's a destination for both big celebrations and every day hanging out. They're beloved institutions in rural communities where the cocktails are strong,

the food hardy and affordable, the furniture chunky and old-fashioned, and decades of cigarette smoke

linger in the drapes and tablecloths. In author J. Ryan Strattel's new novel, Saturday Night at

the Lakeside's Supper Club, we meet three generations of women who run one such

magical place. It's tough work and it takes its toll. The family has faced down hardship and

grief and now they face an uncertain future as chain restaurants threaten their livelihood.

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I love authors who marinate their work in place.

Wallace Stegner, the West, Alice Walker, the South, Carl Hies in Florida, William Kennedy, Upstate, New York,

and Jay Ryan Strattel,

who writes love letters to Minnesota in novels like Kitchens of the Great Midwest and the

Lager Queen of Minnesota. And now, Saturday night at the Lakeside Supper Club, which, no less than

Roxanne Gay, called A Perfect Book. It's set in Bear Jall Lake in Upper Minnesota.

The Lakeside Supper Club offered meals that began with a free relish tray

and a basket of bread with a round of brandy old-fashions,

then a spread of hearty cuisine with fish on Friday's, prime rib Saturdays,

a round of grasshoppers for dessert.

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