How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty

by Bonny Reichert

An “absolutely transformative” (People) culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family—sustenance and survival—from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

“Beautifully written, heartbreaking and hopeful.”—Ruth Reichl, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Novel

AN NPR AND THE GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

When you’re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.

Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on.

Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Stepping into the kitchen to connect her past with her future, the author recounts the defining moments of her life in a poignant tale of scarcity and her colorful childhood in the restaurant business, the crumbling of her first marriage and the intensity of young motherhood, her decision to become a chef, and that life-altering visit to Poland. Whether it’s the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her baba Sarah’s elbow, the creamy vichyssoise she taught herself to cook in her tiny student apartment, or the brown butter eggs her father, now 93, still scrambles for her whenever she needs comfort, cuisine is both an anchor and an identity; a source of joy and a signifier of survival.

How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman’s search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother, and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done? This moving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Food, History, Audiobook, Holocaust, Biography Memoir

Audible Audio

First published January 21, 2025

Reviews

[E. L. Jacob · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a flop for me. The title caught my attention immediately. And then the description of unearthing her culinary lineage and telling her father's story of surviving the Holocaust had me curious. I was under the impression she was going to be telling his story with little sprinkles of her life throughout, while also talking about the food that her father remembered. Instead, it was all about her with her father's story sprinkled in. And the food was just thrown in for some unnecessary reason. I didn't care about her cooking French cuisine in her first apartment or going to culinary school.
This book did make me start to think about how the Holocaust not only affected the survivors, but the children of the survivors afterwards. How the offspring had to navigate the feelings of what happened to their parents/loved ones. However, I wouldn't recommend this book for that purpose. There has to be better options out there for that. At times, she seemed almost selfish and self-centered when it came to that. Almost like she forgot she didn't actually live it, her father did. Example: she didn't originally want to accompany her family to see a grave of her father's family in Poland because it would upset her. Ma'am! Your father was the one who lived it, not you. Put on your big girl panties and be there for your father.
I feel like it wasn't until the last hour to hour and a half of the book that she actually dove into her father's past.. and then she admitted in her authors notes that majority of what she wrote was fictional!!! What?!?! You mean to tell me your father has been asking you to write his story all your life and the best you can give him is the last hour of your own memoir and make half of it up?

[*TUDOR^QUEEN* · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book about a woman who was very close to her father, a man who was a Holocaust survivor. He tried not to burden her too much with his Holocaust related stories while she was much younger, but as she grew into adulthood he gradually shared more as she hungered for this information. Ironically enough, it seemed like he was able to handle the horrors of his past much better having lived it, while his daughter was filled with much more anxiety the more information she pried from him.

Her father was very passionate about the cultural foods he remembered eating from the loving hands of his own mother, and would often describe them to his daughter. In turn, she also developed a passion for these foods, learning how to cook them from both her father and maternal grandmother. She eventually parlayed this into attending chef school. Her father had owned and operated restaurants, but did not want this overwhelming work intensive future for his daughter. In the end, she organically mixed her gift for writing with her culinary obsession and wrapped it around her father's story. I think this amalgam of ingredients she combined in this memoir made the process of telling his story much more palatable. I loved hearing about the foods she was making, even though for the most part I had never eaten any of them in my lifetime. She made it all sound so delicious!

The father's Holocaust experiences did not weigh down the book heavily- they were artfully interspersed throughout the book around the author's own life story and all the culinary interludes- and I learned a lot about this horrific slice of history in such a personal way that I had never really experienced before. Well-done.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine who provided an advance reader copy via NetGalley.

[kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

How to Share an Egg is Riechert’s story of her father’s survival from the Holocaust as well as her own story of growing up and finding herself in the shadow of his catastrophic background, oftentimes questioning her right to struggle when compared to what her father endured.

Reichert traces key moments from her past, regaling readers not only of the heart and emotion that made each moment significant but of the meal associated with it. From a bowl of borscht in Warsaw to her dad’s special lox brunch to the many baking lessons from her Baba.

I greatly enjoyed Reichert’s storytelling; she writes in a way that makes you want to keep reading. With that said, there were many moments where I felt like I wanted more from the story and I wanted her to go deeper where, instead, she backed off. Reichart chooses to tell her story in snippets or small vignettes, which are mostly about her own journey through life with pieces of her dad's history woven in. Because of the aforementioned I would argue that this book is digestible (no pun intended) for most readers even though it focuses around one glaringly heavy topic.

A story of resiliency and re-building, of family and food, it will definitely be one that I recommend but not one that I would necessarily return to.

Thank you Random House for the early copy in exchange for an honest review! Available 01/21/2025

[Lyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. I went into it wanting to learn about the author's holocaust survivor father and his story but was met with the author's flinching sensitivity any time we almost got to learn more. It was frustrating. In fact, I found it so hard to relate to the author as she came across as very self-absorbed. I can understand having difficulty coming to grips with your father being a Holocaust survivor and everything that entails, but the level of her sensitivity to the subject was incomprehensible to me.

I understand that this is a failing of empathy on my part, but I'm just being honest about my frustrations while reading this. Her father asked her early on in her life if she would write a book on his story. Decades pass without it coming to pass as she breaks down every time she tries to approach the subject. She takes pride in doing difficult things in her life, and yet she struggles to summon up the courage to face the horrors of the Holocaust for her father's sake. Why couldn't she be strong for her father and do this for him when all his life, he protected her?

In the end, she did write this book... but it was so centered on her that her father's story took up maybe 10% of the book if I'm being generous. By the time she started seriously interviewing her father for the book, I believe he was 90. In the afterword of the book, she says that she had to invent some things to fill in the gaps. I couldn't help but wonder if those gaps would have been there if she had asked him about these things 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. How much of his story was lost to time because no one asked him about it? Somewhere early in the book, she mentions how the Jewish people who survived the Holocaust found that even fellow Jewish people who weren't in Europe for it did not want to hear their stories. I found it sad that by being so sensitive about the subject, she, in effect, was saying to her father that she could not bear to hear the story and so would not listen to it.

I am being harsh on her. What could I know of being a child of a Holocaust survivor? What could I know of their pains and their generational trauma? How dare I judge her when I am not Jewish, European, or even of similar age as her? Unfortunately, from my limited point of view, I could not understand her. I struggled to empathize with her. Maybe it's just me.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A searingly raw and emotional memoir by Canadian journalist and chef, Bonny Reichert. The daughter of a Polish Holocaust survivor, Reichert interweaves her story of intergenerational trauma, Jewish identity, mental health with her lifelong love of food in its many forms. At times heartbreaking but always moving and honest, this was an incredible story of resilience, family and love told from a very talented writer. I loved it on audio especially read by the author herself and highly recommend for fans of authors like Ruth Reichl or Ina Garten.

[Laura A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bonny never questioned her ancestry. Whike on vacation, she wanted to learn more about what food they ate. I enjoyed this book.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of, How to Share an egg, by Bonny Reichert, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Bonny Reichert father survived Holocaust. Food has always been a thing for Bonny, it can be comforting and used for survival. Food is a link to her past present and future. I enjoyed this book.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

First the title fit perfectly. I liked the way the author told her story and the story of her family. I thought all the bits about food would be monotonous, but I never got that feel.

I also liked the way she added in the less than shining moments. It felt authentic. Overall, this felt well written and I lulled into its gentle sway. So 4 stars.

[Ivy Kaprow · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this book but my hopes were dashed when I realized this is the author’s memoir, not a story based on her father’s fascinating life.
Bonny Reichert is a magazine journalist, a chef, a wife, a mother, the youngest sister, and the dad of a Holocaust survivor. It’s the last descriptor that has defined her for all of her life. Because of her father’s experiences living in the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz during the later years of the war, he had a different outlook on life and food than most people and it showed in how he raised his children.
Ms. Reichert’s memoir takes us through her life through different foods and meals she’s eaten and cooked. In that sense, it reminded me very much of Stanley Tucci’s memoirs. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as Mr. Tucci’s.
This would have been much better had Ms. Reichert taken her father’s story and written that, especially because that’s what her original intention had been. I honestly couldn’t care less about the meals she cooked, the years she was in school, or the cookbooks she collected. While I greatly appreciated the parts that talked about her deep fear, her attempting to see what life in the ghetto was like for her father, and her very strong writer’s block I was here for Saul Reichert’s story and I got just a small snippet of it (and that small snippet was far more interesting than everything else I read before and after).

[Erin Cataldi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Debut author Bonny Reichert is no stranger to writing, as an award-winning journalist who has long written about food and parenting. How to Share an Egg is a deeply moving memoir about growing up with a father who survived the Holocaust and lost nearly everything (family, heritage, health, belongings) in the process. When he immigrated to Canada after the war, he brought with him food and memories. When your father barely survived on scraps during a mass extermination, you learn to have an appreciation for all food. As Bonny grew into adulthood, her father told her more and more about his experiences in the ghetto and extermination camps; it haunted her and she suffered generational trauma. Until she was in her forties, she avoided anything to do with the horrors of the Holocaust. This memoir is not only her father’s story, but a moving look at her life and the food that helped define her. She grew up on rich Polish food and but branched out as she taught herself to cook food from cookbooks and eventually went to culinary school. Narrated beautifully by the author herself, Bonny’s cadence and rhythm make this a calming and moving story to listen to and engage with. It’s a love story to her family, identity, and food. Verdict – not just foodies will eat up this memoir, this story has something for everyone. Extremely compelling.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speechless, not sure anything I can put into words can capture the emotions I felt while reading this. The author weaves family, history, and food into a moving story around her father’s story of surviving the Holocaust. Dishes are detailed so well through the chapters in between moments of family relationships and the author’s personal growth.

“For us, the way that people cook and eat, how they set their tables, and the utensils they use all tell a story.”

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well written memoir of the authors journey through the love of food, her family and her Jewish roots. Bonny is very close to her father, now living in Canada they came over from Poland after WWII, where her father and his family were put in concentration camps, and where he miraculously survived at the end of the war .
His daughter, the author as she grew up, her father started telling her about what he went through in the camps, and this seemed to make her more traumatized than he was about what happened. He always tried to look at the brighter side of life.
Together they found out things about there relatives, and they even made trips back to Poland to research some of it.
She was also searching what would really make her happy, and food was one of the things, going to cooking school, getting married and having kids, but also connecting with her family, their traditions and learning to master some of the Polish dishes and some that her Grandmother had made and that were great memories for her parents.
This book was a page turner for me. Beautifully done.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing group – Ballantine ,for a copy of this book.

[Bonnie Goldberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy Pub Day!
Bonny Reichert grew up hearing her Holocaust survivor father telling her "Sweetheart, do you hear me? It's okay. It's over and we survived." But what Ms. Reichert comes to understand - through painful discussions with her father, travel back to Poland, and through the excavation of her own anxieties and fears, that physical survival does not necessarily equate with psychic survival. When a parent survives a horror, how much is transmitted on a deep emotional level to the children? Reichert explores this issue through childhood memories and her adult life, but this is not a book about - or solely about intergenerational trauma. This is also a memoir about the centrality of food in families, in Jewish life, in an immigrant's life. Reichert's lifelong fascination with the creation of food and its ability to nourish runs parallel with her reckoning of her father's life and survival. She learns "survival is not one thing - one piece of luck or smarts or intuition - but a million smalls ones. This choice not that one. This brave move, that good stranger. Careful here. Reckless there." Keeping with the food metaphor, I gobbled this memoir up in a day and highly recommend it. Thank you Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the DRC.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I remember reading an article once about trauma, and how some forms of trauma - such as childhood hunger/malnourishment - can reverberate over several generations. I was fascinated, and Reichert's memoir is a testament to the impacts the Holocaust had on her life, despite being born to safety in Canada many years after the end of the war. As the product of a Holocaust survivor (her father) and a parent focused on being svelte and sophisticated (her mother), one might guess that she has a very disordered relationship with food. However, her father owned a handful of restaurants and was an extremely kind and loving man who never weaponized his experiences (of the "I nearly starved to death as a teenager" type). Still, Reichert early on became the "sensitive one" of her parents' four children, and had extremely visceral reactions to her father's stories and to Holocaust stories in general. Her relationship to this trauma was further complicated as her interest in writing and food grew, and her father saw an opportunity to write a book together. In the end, of course, she has written a book, albeit not the one her father probably envisioned.

While her father is at times the focus of the book, this memoir really focuses on her life and her father's role in it. It is a love story of a parent and child, and a testament to the ongoing effects of a war that ended decades ago. Reichert explores her evolving relationship to this trauma and with her father. While her relationship with him is vivid, I did wish to understand her relationship to her three older sisters more. Instead, her sisters are largely summed up as one composite character (though there are occasional individual references, they aren't flushed out as separate people with unique personalities). Overall, though, this is a stunning memoir.

[Sam Cheng · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved how How to Share an Egg honors Reichert’s dad and grandmother. I also enjoyed Toronto life in the 90s pictured with bbq pork buns in Chinatown and beef patties from Kensington. Reichert’s strongest writing shines through when she describes her relationship with her father, Saul, and as she retells Saul’s memories in first person. I cried once in chapter 53 at the ghetto’s liquidation and twice in chapter 54 with the photograph and Saul’s last sight of his mother and sisters. The theme of intergenerational trauma is important, and I’m glad it’s explored here, and through food and recipes at that. I hope I can eat Reichert’s cooking one day. 

The sections about Reichert’s stint in university and marriages weren’t as compelling. The writing decisions felt odd. I wonder if it would have been better if Reichert explored her relationship with her first husband, kids, and job (as an editor) in more depth. At the same time, I found some of the detailing a little bit tedious to get through. I dunno what the solution is; this is why I’m not an editor. But here are some novice ideas.

The author’s note at the end adds to my confusion. Initially, I appreciated how coherently Reichert links Saul’s memory of the past beginning to flow more freely when she cooks cholent (chapter 46), reminding Saul of his beloved mother. However, in the author’s note, Reichert comments on how she devised this shifting point in the memoir. It seems odd to base a key moment in Saul’s storytelling on the desire to move the memoir along more smoothly. Also, in the author’s note, Reichert mentions that “Julie” is a composite character of her three sisters irl. This was helpful info, and maybe this was to protect their privacy. However, I thought it was strange that she didn’t explore those relationships, and I think that would’ve strengthened the storytelling component.

I want to add that it’s good Reichert wrote How to Share an Egg because she clearly identified publishing this memoir as her next milestone toward healing. That’s an accomplishment, and I commend her perseverance.

[Florence Migga · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up

I’m glad I spent time with this book! I like the creative way Bonny approached telling her father’s story and it was interesting to follow her journey to get there. Admittedly, maybe because I was doing audio, it felt really drawn out. Also, the food is the theme of the book, yea, but if I’d been reading with my eyes I probably would have skipped several of the cooking/recipe bits.

All in all, a good book club pick!

[Kari Yergin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Christopher Josey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoirs destroy me. Imagine a bar in Minneapolis, styled like a French cafe, with people swing dancing to Polka Dots and Moonbeams played by a live band. I'm in the corner of said bar, crying my eyes out because I made the mistake of reading this book in a public setting.

[Jackie Sunday · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eggs. We love them and they give us nourishment. From my first glance of the cover, it looked like a friendly book about cooking eggs. True, it’s about food and the enjoyment of cooking but there’s a lot more going on in this memoir. It quickly got my attention with a taste of reality.

The reader quickly learned from the start that one egg was shared between two starving Jewish boys during WWII in Poland. They were desperately trying to survive after five years of severe abuse and terror from the Nazis. One of the boys was Bonnie Reichert’s dad. After the war, he found a new life in Edmonton, Canada.

Bonnie’s dad encouraged her often to tell his story. The thought of what he endured gave her nightmares especially when she was young. But years later, she did an intense amount of research with international travels to Poland and Germany. She combined her dad’s story from the war with her own career path and passion for food.

Many of the short chapters started with something to eat. Bonnie learned early how to cook from her grandma and dad. It’s impossible to read this book on an empty stomach as she described mouth-watering dishes as she explored cooking as a career.

There have been numerous books about the preparation of food but a first to have a memoir that includes this dark part of history. Her dad was a strong survivor and his story is important and educates all of us.

My thanks to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of January 21, 2025.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gobbled this book! Literally. I picked it up intending to just taste it but it was so easy to read and I bonded immediately with the little Bonny that I had to keep reading to see what happened. Finished in one day but remembered for much longer, this book will stay with me a while. The author’s relationship with her father is a very familiar one to me. She wants to please and protect him and his goal in life seems to be to make her life as easy as possible. My father had similar aspirations for me and, like Bonny, I know I disappointed him with many of my choices in life. I love the full circle of this plot. It is a memoir but there definitely is a story line that is quite engrossing. The history and cultural lessons along the way were wonderful too. The ending is satisfying and although I didn’t enjoy some of the repetition, this is a five star book for me.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the advance copy.

[Katie Vogel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advanced copy of this book through Netgalley. What an incredible, loving, vulnerable story this book tells. I have read a lot of accounts and stories about the Holocaust, but nothing like this one from a survivor’s child. The author expresses her generational trauma so clearly and it is such a sympathetic read. I loved the mix of her story alongside her father’s story, and the addition of how food was so important to her whole family. I will definitely return to this one again.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

A number of issues resulted in a low rating -including too much about her issues and really very little about her father's experiences.

[ツツ]

dnf, audiobook read by the author, 55 of 2025

When I encounter works that nudge me toward common biases and stereotypes, I usually stop reading them.

I don’t know much about the Holocaust beyond what was taught in history classes, and through osmosis. I want to cautiously express that I’m uneasy with how the Holocaust occupies space in our social consciousness. Perhaps this discomfort arises because nearly every form of oppression, past or present, depends on plausible deniability. The Holocaust, as an extreme and spectacular manifestation of oppression, fits people’s schema of what suffering is supposed to look like.

Not every misery can be articulated, not every misery can be told, and not every misery can be understood. On a skeptical note, I sometime wonder whether this catastrophe is so widely recognized partly because it happened to ‘white’ folks?

This book shows me another aspect I hadn’t previously considered: that a catastrophe’s narrative can permeate collective awareness while the individuals and their lived experiences remain overlooked—or even avoided—by those who claim to care. And how such lived experiences can be reduced to talking points serving others’ interests. This book felt like a bait‑and‑switch with its connection to the Holocaust, as the author ends up talking mostly about themself.

[Emily Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love culinary memoirs so much. This is one of the sparkling, perfect examples of the genre. Heartrending and full to the brim of love, this read is weighty in the best way. It’s a portrait of intergenerational family trauma and resilience and a woman’s reckoning with the life she has been born into. I haven’t picked up a Holocaust book in such a long time, but this read has reminded me how massive the effects of the event were. The themes of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery were so moving, especially tied to the worst event in human history. The often difficult relationship between strong, loving parents and eager to please, overly responsible children was so well displayed through Reicherts brave and honest storytelling of her own life; she perfectly captured the nuance of caring so much that it suffocates you and showing up over and over again, unwilling to give up on the most important people in your life. The healing that she has experienced brings so much hope to the problems of life that seem so all consuming… this is an uplifting, powerful story. I’ll be thinking on this one for a while.

[Amy L · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to finish this book. It packed such a powerful emotional punch that I could only manage to read it in fits and starts because it mirrored the horrific experiences of my parents during WWII, We, too, heard their tragic stories in age-appropriate bits and pieces as they tried to shield us as much as possible from the realities of the unspeakable, and enduring hunger was always one of the recurring themes. They therefore instilled in us a deep respect and appreciation for the bountiful food on our table, as only people who have experienced true starvation can. A beautifully written memoir, but a difficult read for me.

[Roben · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author shares stories of growing up with her father, a survivor of the Holocaust. After the war, he eventually made his way to Canada and started a new life there. He shared stories of his experiences with his children but he never wanted it to overshadow their life. Some of the trauma, however, did pass down - especially to Bonny, the youngest and the author of the book. She intertwines her father's history, her own family history, and how the Holocaust impacted her own life. And her ability to eventually tame some demons by writing bits of her father's story in this book.

Each Holocaust story is unique because we are all unique individuals. Most don't end with survival so that was one distinct difference with this book. I think it would make a great book club selection and also would be helpful to anyone dealing with trauma and grief.

[Monica | readingbythebay · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5. This is a very moving memoir about food and family, written by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

For most of her life, Bonny Reichert resisted writing about her father’s story. She didn’t want to cause him any pain by reliving the horrible details of his time working in a Jewish ghetto in Poland, and then later, being held at Auschwitz-Birkenau. But even more so, she had always been extra sensitive and easily traumatized, and didn’t want to have to carry his pain with her. It was not until she was in her midlife that she realized that she must tell her father’s story in order to release its hold on her. This is a really well-written mash up of Reichert’s life and her father’s life, describing her upbringing, her culinary journey, and her father’s story of hunger, and ultimately, survival. If you enjoyed THE POSTCARD, I think you will love this too.

Many thanks to Ballantine Books @penguinrandomhouse for the advance reader’s copy. I highly recommend this memoir!

[Mara Bosloy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moving memoir from the child of a Holocaust survivor who uses her love for food as the central guide and support through her intergenerational trauma.

The part where her younger self asks her father what the marks on his arm are and why they won’t come off was the first part, but certainly not the last, to make me cry.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, luscious, moving memoir.

[Barb Wiseberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!!!