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Tom Crann

In J. Ryan Stradal's new book, the Midwest supper club is a character unto itself

portrait of a man with glasses next to a yellow book cover
“Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club” is a family drama set in and around a supper club in the fictional northern Minnesota town of Bear Jaw. Author J. Ryan Stradal says it’s “the kind of book you can’t take the Minnesota out of in editing.”
Courtesy of Penguin Random House

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It starts with an old fashioned or two, then a big plate of prime rib or some walleye, maybe macaroni and cheese or scalloped potatoes on the side, and a relish tray — there should be a relish tray — and a band on the weekend for dancing. That perfect supper club experience may be fading in some ways, but it's certainly alive and vibrant in the latest novel from Minnesota-raised author J. Ryan Stradal.

“Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club” is set in the 1990s in and around a supper club in the fictional northern Minnesota town of Bear Jaw. It’s a family drama that unwinds after bartender and owner Mariel gets in a car accident on the way to pick up her mother, who then stubbornly waits and waits — and waits some more — for her daughter to show up. She waits so long she becomes a local hero and KSTP’s Jason Davis brings his “On the Road” segment to her.

“There’s the largest ball of twine, there’s the largest popcorn ball and there’s the longest passive aggressive waiting period,” Stradal said, adding this is “the kind of book you can’t take the Minnesota out of in editing.”

Stradal said the supper club setting, inspired by his family’s outings to Wiederholt's Supper Club in Hastings and his days as a janitor at the Steamboat Inn in Prescott, Wis., as well as interviews with restaurant owners, offers a lot of literary fodder.

“Supper clubs are almost always family owned and run,” Stradal said. “There’s a really good chance you’ll meet the owner. And quite often, they have staff that have been there for quite awhile, too. A lot of the owners I interviewed for this book had waitresses going on decades, and you wont see that at most restaurants.”

“Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club” is out now. Stradal has several book tour events scheduled in Minnesota and Wisconsin through July.