Dinner with the Smileys by Sarah Smiley

Dinner with the Smileys by Sarah Smiley

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.

Sarah Smiley is the author of a syndicated newspaper column published locally in the Brunswick Times-Record and Bangor Daily News, and in Washington, Florida, Colorado and Texas. Sarah has written three books: the memoirs Dinner with the Smileys, (Hyperion, 2013) Going Overboard, (Penguin/New American Library, 2005), and a collection of essays titled I'm Just Saying . . ., (Ballinger, 2008). She is a frequent contributor for Parade, Huffington Post and Military.com. Sarah has been featured in The New York Times Magazine; O, the Oprah Magazine; Parade (cover story); GoodHousekeeping; Newsweek; DownEast; Maine; and Military Spouse Magazine (cover story). Sarah also has appeared on the Today Show, Katie (Couric), Nightline, CNN's American Morning and Sunday Morning, CBS's The Early Show, Fox News Studio B, and MSNBC Live. Locally, Sarah is a frequent co-host and guest on WVOM, The Voice of Maine, and The Nite Show with Danny Cashman. Sarah has been featured on WCSH6's 207 and MPBN. In 2014, Smiley was awarded the American Legion Auxiliary's prestigious Public Spirit Award. She lives with her husband and kids in Bangor, Maine.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780316408943
ISBN 10	0316408948
Title	Dinner with the Smileys
Author	Sarah Smiley
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Hachette Books
Year published	2014-09-16
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable