A Place at the Table

An Indiebound “Next Pick,” Target “Club Pick,” and beloved fan favorite, A Place at the Table chronicles three nuanced characters whose lives intersect in an eccentric, midtown Manhattan café. With inspiration drawn from New York’s landmark Café Nicholson and rooted in author Susan Rebecca White’s love of cooking, A Place at the Table offers a powerful testament to the outer journeys that lead to inner healing.

While the book is a work of fiction, White’s imagination was sparked by the life of Edna Lewis, the legendary African-American chef and author of many books, including the timeless A Taste of Country Cooking, who helped found Café Nicholson in the late 1940s – and was later a dear friend and mentor to chef Scott Peacock.

Spanning from a settlement of formerly enslaved people in 1920s North Carolina to Manhattan in the 1980s, A Place at the Table celebrates the healing power of food and the magic of New York City as three seekers come together, learning that their lives can be more connected, meaningful, and interesting than they ever thought possible.

–“No writer should be able to write smoothly and cleanly from three very different perspectives about lost love, betrayal, pound cake, fear, family ties, racism, Baptists, ‘the other,’ Episcopalians, the South, and New York. But Susan Rebecca White has–and without a false note nor a single sentimental pink bow.” — Clyde Edgerton

Read a chapter from A Place at the Table.