Download Your Copy Finding Freedom: A Cooks Story; Remaking A Life From Scratch Developed By Erin French File Format Audio Book

Erin French, owner and chef of the critically acclaimed The Lost Kitchen, a TIME world dining destination, a lifeaffirming memoir about survival, renewal, and finding a community to lift her up

Long before The Lost Kitchen became a world dining destination with every seating filled the day the reservation book opens each spring, Erin French was a girl roaming barefoot on aacre farm, a teenager falling in love with food while working the line at her dad's diner and a young woman finding her calling as a professional chef at her tiny restaurant tucked into ath century mill.
This singular memoira classic American storyinvites readers to Erin's corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the "girl from Freedom" fairytale, and the notsopictureperfect struggles that have taken every ounce of her strength to overcome, and that make Erin's life triumphant.


In Finding Freedom, Erin opens up to the challenges, stumbles, and victories that have led her to the exact place she was ever meant to be, telling stories of multiple rockbottoms, of darkness and anxiety, of survival as a jobless single mother, of pills that promised release but delivered addiction, of a man who seemed to offer salvation but in the end ripped away her very sense of self.
And of the beautiful son who was her guiding light as she slowly rebuilt her personal and culinary life around the solace she found in foodas a source of comfort, a sense of place, as a way of bringing goodness into the world.
Erin's experiences with deep loss and abiding hope, told with both honesty and humor, will resonate with women everywhere who are determined to find their voices, create community, grow stronger and discover their bestselves despite seemingly impossible odds.
Set against the backdrop of rural Maine and its lushly intense, bountiful seasons, Erin reveals the passion and courage needed to invent oneself anew, and the poignant, timeless connections between food and generosity, renewal and freedom.
Erin French is the chef of the critically acclaimed The Lost Kitchen, one of the most exclusive restaurants in the country, where the only way to get a seat is to mail in a postcard and be entered into their lottery.
There, you will compete with the other,postcards that came in for a chance to eat at this smallseat restaurant during its open season.


Finding Freedom details Chef French's journey from a young age discovering her love of food and cooking, to her early adult life of being a struggling single mom, to her rock bottom years of prescription pill and alcohol addiction, to becoming the successful woman that she is today.
This was a journey fraught with peril and heartbreak, but also with healing and redemption,

A memoir is such a personal experience, and you can tell that French put her heart and soul into this.
She went through some extremely traumatic experiences in her life, and it must have been hard to put it all in writing and to be so open to judgement and criticism.
Yet she was brutally honest and often spent a lot of time on introspection to figure out her own role in what transpired.
I admire her honesty and her unflinching ability to look at herself, something that is not easy for anyone to do, let alone in such a public forum.


But I had a few issues with this book that prevented me from connecting with it more, For one thing, her writing style is extremely descriptive and detailed, For example, if she's talking about her restaurant, she would describe everything about it, including its wall color, countertops, chairs and tables, lighting choices, silverware, napkins, plates and bowls, etc.
, leaving no detail unmentioned. That, plus her preference for long unbroken paragraphs, means that it's not unusual to turn to a new page, see a wall of text of nothing but descriptions.
It made it hard for me to keep my attention, and when it did wander, I had trouble remembering where I was in the paragraph.


For a memoir, there's also a noticeable lack of anecdotes, especially towards the second half of the book, For example, she often talks about her son, but there isn't a single thing I remember about him because she never shared anything concrete.
Or she often mentions that she and her sister don't get along, but didn't actually give any examples of what happened.
Instead, she tells her story mostly through introspection, with events quickly summarized so that she can get to her thoughts and feelings on it, which is where she really spends the bulk of her time.


It was also extremely hard to read what happened to her, She grew up surrounded by toxic people and relationships, Instead of setting boundaries, she only knew how to enabled these people and to grab on ever harder, seeking their approval and affection.
Then, when she became an adult, those were the only kinds of relationships she knew how to have and she went on to replicate them.
It was really frustrating to see this happen when she was young, but it was even more so once she became an adult and continued in this toxic environment.


This is a very dark book, and I didn't realize going in that it would be so, What I thought I was getting is an inspirational story about a struggling chef finally making it in the culinary world, along with interesting tidbits of what it's like to be this profession.
Instead this is really an addict's story of growing up in an abusive household, not learning the necessary skills to cope, and then using drugs and alcohol to do it.
It's about hitting absolute rock bottom and then starting the long slow climb out into the light,

After everything she's been through, I'm glad Erin French got the success she worked so hard for, While I didn't completely connect with her memoir, I do think her restaurant sounds amazing, and I hope one day to have the chance to try it for myself.


My heartfelt thanks for the advance copy that was provided for my honest and unbiased review, I remembered liking Erin French's cookbook The Lost Kitchen, so when I saw that she had a memoir coming out I wanted to check it out.
I love a good food/chef memoir, But, honestly I wish I hadn't read this one, Her life was so awful that it's honestly a miracle that she's created such a successful restaurant against all odds, Her parents owned a local diner and Erin grew up helping out there and that's where she learned to cook, But, her father was an alcoholic and a MEAN one, so he never encouraged her, only berated her when she did something wrong.
She and her sister aremonths apart in age, but don't get along at all and often go years with no communication.
She got pregnant atand had to drop out of college, Just when she started getting on her feet with her son, she meets her futurehusband Tom who is almost her father's age.
The way she described their relationship starting I honestly didn't understand why she ever got together with him, Maybe telling the story in hindsight she could see all the red flags she ignored there were a LOT, but either way they get married and he adopts her son.
Oh, but guess what Tom is also a mean alcoholic, So, Erin turns to Xanax and alcohol to cope with her POS husband and trying to run the restaurant she just started.
Then, her husband has her involuntarily committed after a fight, closes her restaurant, and gets primary custody of her son using the commitment against her.
Isn't this sounding like a great time already So, at the age ofshe is back living with her parents and trying to scrape her life back together.
Honestly, the last section of the book is the only mostly redeeming and hopeful part of the whole book, She does manage to relaunch her restaurant, divorce Tom, and get half custody of her son, but it's still a LONG way from even a kind of happy ending.
The one part that made me the happiest was that Erin's mother ended up divorcing her father after seeing Erin go through her ridiculously bitter divorce and come out on the other side happier.
But, it's obvious that Erin is still trying to get her father's approval through her restaurant which is sad, I think she desperately needs some therapy

if she's not getting it because just reading about her life made me feel depressed.
I would not recommend this one,.stars. I didn't round it up because the prose, especially in description is run on to the point at which it is very hard to follow.
As is her pronoun use, At times maybe to be sarcastic Regardless you may be left guessing who he or she IS,

Incredibly honest and revealing straight forward about herself, For sure. And also inspirational to a healthy degree, That was a breath of fresh air in memoirs modern absolutely, She doesn't whine. She tells.

Interesting family reveals too, She has to own tons of moxie to write of her sibling and Dad as she did, Hard work for sure. Also immense rewards.

This book is darker than trailer or reviews would lead you to believe, There are also pieces of Erin "left out", Voids she worked in both meanings of worked literally and figuratively around considerably, Thank you to Celadon for surprising me with another book in the mail, I love surprises, especially when they are books, : This was not my favorite book from them so far but I found it a very interesting read, And I think I just did not connect with anyone or anything I was reading about so it could totally be me that was off.
We meet Erin when she is a young girl and we also meet her family, . . they play a big role in who she is and how she thinks of herself as she grows up, We learn that pretty much her whole life revolved around food in one way or another, As a child, her dad bought the diner that took so much of his time and eventually hers as she ends up working in the diner as well.
She did get away for a short time as she tried to go to school and leave Freedom and her dysfunctional family behind but things didn't work out the way she intended and she came home with more than the attitude she left with.
Now she is raising a small boy on her own, which can be scary enough,when she meets the guy she eventually marries.
Shocker, things don't work out so well here either, . . but we learn just how much she is willing to fight to have the life she wants, I'm just going to throw this out there, . . there is a scene involving chickens where I was just like "What in the actual fk am I reading right now I had to skip past it because it was sickening to me.
. . other than that, the book was good for me, :.