Boardinghouse Stew
A Novel
E. E. Smith

In June of 1943, due to an acute labor shortage caused by the evacuation of all Japanese from the area, as well as many domestic workers preferring war work to house work, Mrs. Mumson is forced to hire a young schoolgirl named Eileen as a maid and cook for the summer. Through one crisis after another—some more comic than tragic—the people who live in the house manage to pull together and become a kind of family. In the center of it all is Eileen, narrating their stories which she is able
to observe from her unique vantage point behind the swinging kitchen door that never quite closes on its rusty hinges.

Evelyn Eileen Smith resides in the San Francisco Bay area and is an award-winning playwright of more than a dozen plays. The debut novel, Boardinghouse Stew was inspired by her own real-life experiences working in a boardinghouse during World War II. Times Like These is based on more real-life adventures through the end of WW II, six years of peace, and the beginning of the Korean War.

October 2011
6x9, 200 pages, 16 photographs
$24.95 cloth
978-0-9835615-1-4

Distributed for Phoenix International.