Lunch Ladies

Winner of the 2025 WOMEN IN PUBLISHING SUMMIT AWARD FOR BEST FEMALE DEBUT

"Readers who love nostalgic small-town tales will devour Carr's debut." - BookLife

"A heartwarming story that captures relationships, growth, and tragedy in an enlightening atmosphere readers will find engrossing." Midwest Book Review

"Wonderfully complex characters...perfect for a book club or rainy Sunday morning." - Independent Book Review

A TREASURE OF BOOK CLUB FICTION. Lunch Ladies captures time and place with laugh-out-loud humor, and reach-for-a-tissue heartache, as the people of Hanley, Minnesota - living and dead - come together for a community celebration.

For lovers of women's fiction with characters who linger long after the close of a book, Lunch Ladies immerses readers in lives and relationships that are joyful, troubled, and emotionally charged. Characters' intertwined lives, their dreams and heartbreaks, their histories, and their secrets, emerge as this story develops with startling honesty and depth.

Lunch Ladies offers a spot-on depiction of the 1970's in small-town America. As the book opens, it's 1976 and there's a bicentennial parade in the works. Is this a task for the school district's lunch ladies? Their answer would be "no." And yet Crystal, Coralene, and Sheila find themselves crafting food stands to feed parade goers, come the Fourth of July.

Crystal has other things to do: matching lonely travelers from the newspaper obituaries with kind souls still living. Coralene doesn't need this nonsense. She has a home and family, and a nephew she must save before it's too late. Is it already too late for Sheila? Her safe harbor is a booth at Denny's on Friday nights, with the only person who might help her move beyond her past.

In language both lyrical and stark, Lunch Ladies serves up a poignant, tender, and humorous view of the flawed and fascinating citizens of Hanley. The novel is peppered with wit and insight, as it captures the absurdities of family and community life, while revealing the humanity of those who've been lost, or left behind.