A Taste for More

In a breathtaking saga spanning the final three decades of the Great Migration - from the Jim Crow south in rural midcentury Mississippi through the transformative 1970s - a tenacious single mother and culinary genius builds an unprecedented empire. But the one dream she can’t stop chasing may cost her everything...

Readers of Terry McMillan, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Tracy Brown, ReShonda Tate, and Sadeqa Johnson will be captivated by this powerful story of mothers and daughters, against-all-odds success, generational trauma, and redefining home.

Money is security. Always. Margo Dupree has lived by that rule since childhood, when her father’s death plunged her and her mother into poverty. Marriage brought only disillusionment and struggle. But it also gave Margo the determination to migrate north in search of a better life for herself and her young daughter, Lana.

The north, however, isn’t the panacea she expected, and Margo finds herself contending with the all-too-familiar obstacles of racism and prejudice, not to mention the new stresses of urban living. But things change once she realizes that what was once her greatest shame is now her greatest asset--the skills she learned from her mother’s job as a cook. Using her tasty recipes, personality, and relentless hustle, Margo begins to build a successful restaurant chain. Yet despite her ever-more desperate efforts, she can’t earn her heart’s deepest desire: Lana’s forgiveness for her early absence.

As Lana becomes a beautiful young woman with an increasingly mercenary temperament, Margo wonders if she knows her daughter at all--and if she can save her from the bitter and frighteningly dangerous mistakes that may shatter both of their worlds . . .

Phyllis R. Dixon is the acclaimed author of Intermission, Forty Acres, and Down Home Blues, which was shortlisted for the Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List by the Texas Library Association. She also is a contributor to the New Tri-State Defender book review column and to Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she is a former independent bookstore owner, previously worked for the U.S. Treasury Department, and currently serves on several nonprofit boards. She currently lives in Memphis, Tennessee, and can be found online at PhyllisRDixon.com.