Frozen Dinners: A Memoir of a Fractured Family

Elaine Ambrose

Nov 2018 · Mill Park Publishing

About this ebook

Winner of Distinguished Favorite Medal from the 2019 Independent Press Awards. With the advent of TV dinners in the 1950s, an intense and entrepreneurial father rises from poverty to build a multi-million-dollar trucking empire hauling frozen food throughout the Northwest. His determination, combined with generosity and strict punishment, leaves his family in a state of emotional paralysis. After his untimely death, his survivors implode in a maelstrom of brutal courtroom drama, illness, and dementia. The estate and family are destroyed.

Frozen Dinners is the story of Elaine Ambrose, who spends half a century searching for love and warmth beyond the contaminated legacy of her fractured family.

"Full of luscious details, clear-eyed compassion, and enduring joy..." - Kim Barnes, Author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Memoir,

"This tell-all memoir will resonate with anyone who has endured family dysfunction." - Joely Fisher, Author of "Growing Up Fisher"

"Affecting and sometimes poetic, "Frozen Dinners" paints a complex portrait of a twentieth-century Idaho family and its business empire." - Foreword Clarion Reviews

About the author

Elaine Ambrose is a #1 bestselling author of ten books, including "Midlife Happy Hour", "Menopause Sucks," and "Midlife Cabernet", and a syndicated blogger on several online sites. Her short stories have been included in six anthologies, including "Laugh Out Loud," a collection of 40 of the best humorists from the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop. Her memoir, "Frozen Dinners," was released in November 2018 to rave reviews. She organizes professional writing retreats with acclaimed faculty, and she is a popular motivational speaker at college commencement ceremonies, writing conferences, workshops, retreats, book clubs, and live comedy shows.

Elaine's memoir, "Frozen Dinners," won the 2019 Distinguished Favorite Award for Memoir from the Independent Press Book Award program. https://elaineambrose.com/blog/author-wins-global-writing-awards-in-three-genres-in-three-years/

"Midlife Happy Hour" was a finalist for the 2016 ForeWord Book of the Year award in the Humor category. The book won First Place in the Independent Press Awards for Midlife and "Distinguished Favorite" for Humor. The book received a rare 5-Star Review from ForeWord Reviews and is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook read by the author.

Elaine recently updated her award-winning children's book Gators & Taters: A Week of Bedtime Stories. The book is the 2018 Winner of the "Distinguished Favorite" for Children's Literature from the Independent Press Awards program. The book is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook read by the author. She also updated a new version of bilingual storybook, "The Magic Potato," and the book won a writing award from the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards program.

"Midlife Happy Hour" is the sequel to the award-winning Midlife Cabernet, and includes words of wisdom and humorous anecdotes for women who survived careers, kids, and chaos and deserve to have fun at happy hour.

In 2014, Ambrose released a collection of humorous essays titled Midlife Cabernet. The book won a Silver Medal for Humor from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) and the First Place for Humor from the North American Book Awards. Publishers Weekly wrote that the book is “laugh-out-loud funny.” Foreword Reviews wrote that Midlife Cabernet is “Erma Bombeckesque…an argument for joy.” In January 2015, the book ranked #1 in sales in the humor category on Amazon.com and sold more than 8,000 copies.