Stuffed Adventures of a Restaurant Family

Patricia Volk's delicious memoir lets us into her big, crazy, loving, cheerful, infuriating and wonderful family, where you're never just hungryyour starving to death, and you're never just fullyou're stuffed. Volk's family fed New York City for one hundred years, from 1888 when her great-grandfather introduced pastrami to America until 1988, when her father closed his garment center restaurant. All along, food was pretty much at the center of their lives. But as seductively as Volk evokes the food,Stuffedis at heart a paean to her quirky, vibrant relatives: her grandmother with the "best legs in Atlantic City"; her grandfather, who invented the wrecking ball; her larger-than-life father, who sculpted snow thrones when other dads were struggling with snowmen. Writing with great freshness and humor, Patricia Volk will leave you hungering to sit down to dinner with her robust familyboth for the spectacle and for the food.

Patricia Volk is the author of the novel <i>White Light</i> and two collections of short stories,<i> All It Takes</i> and <i>The Yellow Banana</i>. She has published stories, book reviews, and essays in dozens of magazines, including <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, the <i>New York Times Magazine</i>, the <i>New York Times Book Review</i>, <i>New York</i>,<i> The New Yorker</i>, <i>Playboy</i>, <i>Redbook</i>,<i> GQ</i>, <i>The Quarterly</i>, and <i>O</i>, the Oprah Magazine. She was a weekly columnist for <i>New York Newsday</i>, and she lives in New York City.