Tony Shalhoub is bringing We Thought They’d Never Leave: Musings on Food and Family to Boise on Friday, Nov. 6, alongside Josie Adams. The book turns years of family vacation memories and cooking stories into a public event at the Egyptian Theatre in Boise.
Shalhoub said the lake tradition in northeastern Wisconsin is "close to all of our hearts," and the annual gathering can draw 55 people. He described the week as one the family still does every year without catering: "We do it all ourselves and it's pandemonium," a line that fits a book built from order, chaos, and the work of keeping both in the same room.
55 people, one family table
Shalhoub said the gathering includes "card games, swimming, outdoor activities, games, and a talent show," but the center of gravity is the food. He said it "mostly revolves around the food and around the meals preparation and the meal planning and the meal cleanup and the eating. A lot of eating."
The book uses that routine as its structure, which makes the recipes more than filler between anecdotes. Tony’s Fish Stew and Josie’s Cherry Pie sit beside the family stories, while Warm Stuffed Grape Leaves gets singled out by Shalhoub as his favorite because the family rolls it together, with older relatives teaching younger ones how to do it.
Josie Adams on tradition
Adams said "this is what the reunion is all about is new people being brought into the family, carrying on the generations and the traditions," and she hopes the book "makes people want to get together with people they love, whether that's their, their chosen family, their friends, their in-laws, whoever it may be." That gives the Boise appearance a practical edge: readers are not only hearing about a celebrity memoir, they are getting a look at the family system behind it.
Shalhoub also framed the project as a way to answer a question fans may not usually get from his screen work. "People know me, you know, from different films or television, things that I've done, but they don't exactly know what shaped me," he said, pointing to his eight older siblings and one younger sibling as part of the book's core material.
Friday, Nov. 6 at The Cabin
On Friday, Nov. 6, The Cabin is bringing Shalhoub and Adams to the Egyptian Theatre in Boise, giving local readers a chance to hear the family stories directly and see how the memoir-cookbook was built from the traditions they still keep. Shalhoub put the book's larger effect in plain terms: "Maybe someone along the way is inspired to, you know, maybe reach out to a relative or a sibling that maybe they haven't had an easy time with or they haven't spoken to for a while and that they are inspired to kind of extend an olive branch and maybe mend a fence here and there."
