Introduction

**New York Times Bestseller**

From Erin French, owner of the critically acclaimed The Lost Kitchen, a TIME world dining destination, a life-affirming 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 a 25-acre 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 a 19th century mill. This singular memoir?a classic American story?invites readers to Erin's corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the “girl from Freedom” fairytale, and the not-so-picture-perfect 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 rock-bottoms, 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 food?as 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 best-selves 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.

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Discussion Questions

1. How do you think Erin's father influenced her?

2. How do you think Erin's life would have been different if she hadn't become pregnant? Do you think she still would have had a life with food?

3. Why does Erin decide to start Sunday dinners at her home?

4. Why do you think Erin chose Tom French?

5. Do you think Tom had any good intentions when he committed Erin? Do you think she needed help?

6. Do you have a positive opinion of Erin's mother? Why or why not?
7. Do you have a positive opinion of Erin AS a mother? Why or why not?

8. What do you think success means to Erin?

9. What do you think motivated Erin to share her life story? How did you respond to her "voice"?

10. Were there any instances in which you felt Erin was not being truthful? How did you react to these sections?

11. What is the Erin's most admirable quality? Do you want to meet Erin French? Would you want to eat at The Lost Kitchen?

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