Crawfish Dreams — Nancy Rawles

For forty years Camille Broussard has cooked for other people. As a young bride she moved from Louisiana to Los Angeles and settled in the thriving community of Watts; but many of her hopes went up in the flames of the 1965 riots. Now it's 1984--and she's determined to cook for herself. She'll pickle okra, sell meatpies at church, peddle pralines--whatever it takes to revive her scattered family, her neighborhood, and herself. Her grandson Nicholas has just been released from prison and takes up residence in her backyard, and her sons want her to move away. But with support from her talented if unemployed neighbor Lester Pep and her eager but hapless lesbian daughter Grace, she tries to start a business. By serving up recipes from her childhood, she hopes to rekindle her crawfish dreams.

Gracefully written, with a wonderful sense of humor, Crawfish Dreams is a high-spirited novel about family, responsibility, and the pursuit of personal happiness.