Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Dinner with the Smileys

Dinner with the Smileys

Smiley, Sarah

Paperback

Biographies GeneralMilitary Biographies

ISBN10: 0316408948
ISBN13: 9780316408943
Publisher: Hyperion-Acquired Assets
Published: Sep 16 2014
Pages: 384
Weight: 0.83
Height: 1.03 Width: 5.46 Depth: 8.53
Language: English
Fifty-two guests take turns filling a military father's chair at his family's dinner table while he serves his yearlong deployment.

The week before Thanksgiving 2011, Dustin Smiley left for a yearlong military deployment. Soon after, his son Ford, eleven, invited Senator Susan Collins to fill his dad's chair at dinner. On January 3, 2012, Senator Collins came to dinner ... and brought brownies.

So began Dinner with the Smileys, nationally syndicated columnist Sarah Smiley's fifty-two-week commitment to fill her husband's place at the family dinner table with interesting people--from schoolteachers to Olympians, professional athletes to famous authors, comedians to politicians--and unique role models for her three sons, even as she knows Dustin's seat cannot truly be filled until he is home again for the fifty-third dinner.

Why dinner? Because dinnertime is often the loneliest time for people living alone. If houses and apartments were like dollhouses with one side totally exposed, Sarah says, we'd see plenty of people eating alone to the glow of a television.

That was the fate Sarah feared for herself and her children during Dustin's absence. So she opened her home, and she and the kids sent invitations. And they found that a surprising number of people really are available for dinner. You just have to ask.

In a time when popular culture leads us to believe that the family dinner table is dead, Dinner with the Smileys shows people that time spent with family, friends, and neighbors is still very much part of the American lifestyle.

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