Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

In her senior year, Reichl was devastated when Tommy joined the navy, and she began drinking heavily. She decided that she wanted to go to college some distance away from her parents’ home and chose the University of Michigan. Before enrolling in the fall, she wanted to get a summer job at the local Dairy Queen, but Miriam had other plans. Miriam signed Reichl up to work at a summer camp on an island off the French coast.

Béatrice warned Reichl that the camp, which was devoted to providing poor children a summer holiday out of the city, was unlikely to have friendly staffers or good food. Reichl was delighted to find that Béatrice was wrong on both counts; she includes a recipe for “Oléron Berry Tart” as an example of something delicious she ate that summer. She details the kinds of plentiful and delectable food the camp provided, explaining that the main purpose of the camp was to make sure that the boys who attended gained weight over the summer. Reichl developed a crush on another counselor, Georges, but he was uninterested in her, so she spent much of her time eating.

Reichl became friends with another staffer, Danielle. Although Danielle was serious and academically inclined, Reichl was drawn to her because “she wasn’t interested in boys and the boys weren’t interested in [Reichl]” (96-97).