In the early 1990s, when writing a travel guide to a region of southern Wisconsin settled in the 1840s by immigrants from villages in Europe who kept to themselves well into the mid-20th century, speaking in their native tongues and building in traditional styles, I felt I ought to put in a note of caution: do not expect to find a single item worth eating anywhere on your perambulations. According to J Ryan Stradal, those days are, thankfully, gone, and I could now repeat my journey, spoon in hand, and find plenty of adventuresome and delicious cuisine.
Stradal grew up in southern Minnesota, which means that in middle school he was probably required to read Giants in the Earth, Ole Rølvaag’s novel about Norwegian immigration to the Dakota prairies. The clue is that in Kitchens of the Great Midwest, death comes at the beginning (notwithstanding that page one is laugh-out-loud funny). The first character we meet, young Lars Thorvald, has developed his talent for curing lutefisk (dried white fish) and as a result is mercilessly bullied by his fellow students. Eventually, he becomes a chef; when his daughter Eva, the novel’s protagonist, is born, Lars plans to feed her pureed pork loin, Mom’s carrot cake (the recipe is included) and corn dogs. The aforementioned death is a heart attack, caused by carrying a trunk of lutefisk up three flights of stairs.
Stradal’s narrative hops around during the next 30 years, shifting between male and female perspectives, sometimes entering Eva’s mind, other times circling her from a distance. The fourth chapter, “Walleye”, begins: “It was not just Will Prager’s opinion, but also unbiased fact, that in order to get girls in high school, you had to have a thing…. Maybe your thing was that you were a computer nerd and spent Prom Night in your parents’ basement, listening to Rush and thinking about string theory.” Will’s thing is that having been befriended by the lead guitarist of a local band called Smarmy Kitten, he is now obsessed with alt-rock. He uses his thing to attract Eva, the new student in his class. His father is courting someone, too; Will and his sister are deeply rude to her when his father brings her home. She is named Pat. Three chapters later, we enter Pat’s point of view as she is hoping to win the “Bars” division of the county fair bake off for the sixth time. Her bars (the recipe is included) are made of peanut butter, caramels and chocolate chips – straight from the 1950s. She is deeply religious and deeply annoyed with a newcomer to her church group: “Pat could see the skinny woman’s bra when she bent over. To dress like that in a church, even in the Fellowship Hall! Maybe in Florida they sang hymns in their bikinis, but that wouldn’t fly up here!” The shifting points of view can be a bit confusing, but the device has a wonderful payoff - Stradal is so good at evoking the inner lives of his characters, male and female, young and old, that for about two-thirds of the novel, I assumed he himself was female.
Like her father, Eva has an exceptional palate, but by the time she is developing her tastes, the allure of lutefisk has been replaced by that of chili peppers, and the restaurants Eva and her relatives go to are no longer called Hutmacher’s; when Pat’s bars hit the big time, the contest takes place at Petite Noisette. Stradal has a sharp eye for the evolution of culture and for landscape; his tone is light, always a little askew.
But we are not in PG Wodehouse country, hopping gleefully from mishap to mishap unharmed: Stradal’s characters do the best they can with early death, serious illness, family conflict, impoverishment and despair. Life in the great midwest continues to be as it has always been, beset with challenges. One of the most poignant of these takes place when Eva’s boyfriend’s brother goes deer hunting as respite from taking care of his dying mother. He kills a doe, then sees the fawn. Although he agrees with the local consensus that deer are “vermin”, he can’t bear to have the fawn watch him slit the doe’s throat.
Midwesterners never forget what things cost, and Kitchens of the Great Midwest is a terrific reminder of what can be wrested from suffering and struggle – not only success, but also considerable irony, a fair amount of wisdom and a decent meal.
• Golden Age, the third volume of Jane Smiley’s Last Hundred Years trilogy, will be published in October. To order a copy of Kitchens of the Great Midwest for £11.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
