Pastry chef reclaims her own story in new memoir

Pastry chef Lisa Donovan was a young mother who ended up facing abuse and poverty. She was transformed by reading food writer M.F.K. Fisher’s “How to Cook a Wolf” and an excerpt about how women have a tradition of saving each other to survive.s Eventually Donovan found fame and self-worth. She documents her story in her memoir, “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.”

Lisa Donovan says investors are just as much to blame as chefs for a toxic culture in professional kitchens in her memoir, “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.” Photo courtesy of Penguin Press