Community Book Club: The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster

Are you looking to connect with others? Do you love reading all kinds of books? If you answered yes, the Community Book Club is for you!

This month’s book is The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster by Shauna Robinson. One estranged family. One lost recipe. One last barbecue on the line. Mae is about to learn what happens when things go south…

Mae Townsend has always dreamed of connecting with her estranged Black family in the South. She grew up picturing relatives who looked like her, crowded dinner tables, bustling kitchens. And, of course, the Townsend family barbecue, the tradition that kept her late father flying to North Carolina year after year, despite the mysterious rift that always required her to stay behind.

But as Mae’s wedding draws closer, promising a future of always standing out among her white in-laws, suddenly not knowing the Townsends hits her like a blow. So, when news arrives that her paternal grandmother has passed, she decides it’s time to head South.

What she finds is a family in turmoil, a long-standing grudge intact, a lost mac and cheese recipe causing grief, and a family barbecue on the brink of disaster. Not willing to let her dreams of family slip away, Mae steps up to throw a barbecue everyone will remember.

For better or for worse.

The Community Book Club will meet via Zoom on August 1 and August 15 from 6–7:30 p.m.

To register, please send an email to community@iit.edu, and you will receive the meeting credentials.