‘Cooking with Francis’: a seven-year labor of love!

It's finally here, after seven years of cooking, testing, and writing — Cooking with Francis: Gourmet Home Cooking, by Heather Sommer! 

Francis's mother knew how important his log-book was when he was lost — the culmination of his culinary arts degree, over 100 recipes from his classwork and years at a popular Kansas City bistro. She resized (eight gallons of pesto sauce!?) and tested every recipe for the family table, pushing herself, with no formal training, to amazing new levels of understanding food and its sources and preparation and cultural meaning. The result is a beautiful cookbook with recipes for every occasion and taste, and stories to go with many of them. Proceeds will support Heifer International and FrancisFund.org.

‘A Must-Read Narrative of US Military Family Life': A new Amazon review for ‘Losing Francis'

By William M. Decker

Losing Francis: Essays on the War at Home should take its place among the most important recent narratives of US military family life. In clear, courageous, and eloquent prose, Robert Sommer documents what it’s like for parents and siblings to endure, day by day, and hour by hour, not only their loved one’s overseas tour of duty, but that loved one’s perilous return to a homeland that cannot possibly understand the veteran’s trauma and that is grossly unprepared to address the challenges of re-entry. This is a book that needs to be read by legislators and ordinary citizens who, unless they have a more or less direct link to those we have called upon to fight the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, can form no conception of the burdens our soldiers and their families are asked to bear. Losing Francis illuminates one of the great social invisibilities of contemporary American life. It should be on everyone’s list of 2018/2019 must-read titles.