The Ten Cent Cafe

In a charming café in a small Wisconsin city, where everything on the menu costs a mere dime, Henry Durant’s sinister history collides with his promising present in a way that will affect generations to come. Unfolding in the early part of the twentieth century, the novel reveals the lives of four generations of Durant men. Patriarch Henry is a French-Canadian entrepreneur determined to create a new life for his large family in his adopted hometown. His son, George, a self-proclaimed ladies’ man, seeks love and adventure in 1920’s Hollywood and the world of silent movies. Aaron, George’s son, is a tormented individual who longs to be a successful writer. His aspirations bring him into conflict with his father and eventually lead him on a downward spiral. In the end, it is Aaron’s son, Paul, who must overcome the anger and sense of abandonment he feels toward his father in order to find love and realize his own aspirations–dreams that bring him full circle, back to the little city where his ancestors once dwelled. The Ten Cent Café is a timeless tale of love and loss, of ambitions realized and others abandoned, but, above all, it is a story about familial threads that bind a family together and sometimes break it apart. The Ten Cent Café was recognized in the Wisconsin Writers Association’s annual contest in 2011.