Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is J. Ryan Stradal, author of The Lager Queen Of Minnesota published by Pamela Dorman Books in July.

Ryan is the author of Kitchens Of The Great Midwest, which won numerous awards. He has written for the WSJ, Vanity Fair, McSweeney’s amongst many other publications.

The Lager Queen Of Minnesota is a novel about beer. I guess to a certain extent, beer is one of the protagonists of this story. But the heroine of the book is Edith Magnusson a mistress of pies, a hard worker, and a good person. But because bad things Do come to good people, she is widowed, underemployed and saddled (at first) with taking care of her teenaged granddaughter Beverly.

Edith’s sister is for most of the novel, the polar opposite of Edition. They are estranged because of an act that Helen chooses and Edith chooses to respond.

But once again and in closing this introduction, we learn a lot about beer, the good and bad of it, the making of it and how it can forge friendship, enmity and sometimes, love.

Welcome Ryan and thanks so much for joining us today.