As a 20-something, Liz Hauck hatched a plan with her dad, Charlie, to start a cooking program for teenage boys in state care at the agency where he worked. But when Charlie died unexpectedly, Liz decided to press on alone. Home Made is Hauck's moving memoir of the three years she spent shopping, cooking, washing dishes and building a tenuous bond with a rotating cast of boys facing all kinds of trauma and challenges.
Hauck writes with deep compassion, not only for the boys but for her grieving, idealistic younger self. Visiting the group home, upstairs from her dad's former office, brings her into contact with his longtime colleagues and shows her a new side of the work to which he dedicated his life. The actual cooking is often fraught with frustrations: disappearing pots and knives, the occasional kitchen disaster, boys who refuse new foods or don't show up at all. But Hauck perseveres, planning elaborate birthday dinners and simpler weekly meals of stir-fry and homemade pizza. She captures the humor and pathos of interactions with young men already wary of well-meaning adults, and shares glimpses of the ordinary conversations that took place around the table. Home Made is not a prescription for sweeping social change or a story of a white woman saving young men of color (or even herself). Rather, it is a tender, insightful, often funny account of what happens when people show up--and keep showing up--to cook and eat together. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams