Friday at Table Seven: A Northwoods Supper Club Novel

Fourteen Fridays. One table that is not on the reservation sheet.Somewhere off a county road in northern Wisconsin, a supper club opens its doors at four-thirty every Friday. The fryers come up to temperature. The relish trays come out of the walk-in. The brandy Old Fashioneds are already built. By six, the room is full. By ten, the stools are up on the bar.In the back section, half hidden behind a support post that used to be an exterior wall, sits a four-top nobody is ever directed to. Ask the man who runs the front and he will tell you it is simply an awkward table to reserve. That is true, as far as it goes. It is also true that certain people find their way to it without being told.A man arrives straight from a job site without changing. A woman in a good wool coat does not feel like cooking while her husband is in the hospital, and she does not want to eat alone.Friday at Table Seven follows one dining room across a single year, from February ice to the first cold nights of October. The women who work the floor notice everything and say almost none of it. A fish order comes up short. A chair with a lean is never fixed. The coat rack fills with heavy wool and empties into windbreakers. Then, one Friday in September, a chair at Table Seven is left pulled out, and nobody pushes it back in.A quiet, observational novel about grief, work, competence, and the people who keep a room running.For readers drawn to: - Character-driven literary fiction told across fourteen Fridays- Small-town Wisconsin and the rituals of a traditional supper club- Stories about restaurant work, loneliness, community, and ordinary kindness- A measured pace without a mystery plot or a tidy resolutionPull up a chair. The relish tray is already on the table.