By Mary Ann Zehr, contributor
A monthly column by a local teacher and reader about connecting with books and taking in Harrisonburg’s literary scene.
~ Kauffman, Rebecca. The Reservation. Counterpoint, 2026. ~
People who work on a daily basis together can be very wrong in their perceptions of each other. There’s a certain amount of masking that people do so that their co-workers don’t learn too much about them. And the person who is the least adept in understanding the lives and intentions of workers may well be the boss.
These are ideas in The Reservation, local author Rebecca Kauffman’s recent novel. The story is about a day in the life of employees and their boss at Aunt Orsa’s, a pseudo-Italian restaurant and the only fine-dining establishment in a Midwestern university town.
As is true of Kauffman’s previous five novels, the characters are ordinary folks. Major characters in The Reservation–with the exception of restaurant owner Orsa, who is married to a lawyer–don’t have health insurance, don’t own a vehicle or drive rusting cars, and face challenges in paying for decent housing. The characters are ordinary but not predictable. For instance, who knew that the guy who has pet snakes would find a new home for them to please his vegan girlfriend?
Kauffman weaves the perspectives of a dozen people in different jobs into a unified story about what a complicated task it is for restaurant workers to create and serve meals.
The timeframe for the novel is a single day in 2013. The day is special because a very famous author, John Grisham–who sounds much like the John Grisham who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia–is a member of the party that has made a reservation for dinner. The dry-erase board in the kitchen reminds the staff that it’s “Grisham Day.”
Not only is everyone on edge because a special guest is expected, but Danny, the operational assistant (and also Orsa’s nephew), discovers in the morning that 22 of 24 rib-eye steaks have been stolen from the restaurant cooler. Orsa vows to get to the bottom of the mystery while she also sends her amiable husband on an errand to find replacement steaks.
Orsa grates on everyone’s nerves, and not just on this particular day that the restaurant expects a distinguished guest and steaks have gone missing. She investigates the theft with crude strategies for ruling out some employees and playing others off each other.
The novel is engaging not so much because of what happens but rather in the portrayal of the characters and how they view each other as they carry out an amazing array of processes–from folding napkins to torching crème brûlée.
Aunt Orsa’s employees are vulnerable. For instance, Danny didn’t graduate from high school because he dropped out to take care of his ill mother. He doesn’t have many job options. He has been granted a key to enter Aunt Orsa’s from only the basement, not the front door. I feel for him.
I also feel for Edgar, the prep cook who comes to work worn out and red-eyed. His co-workers think he frequently has a hangover, and he does little to dispel this misconception. It’s part of his mask. He’s generous enough to agree to drive Jane, the Mennonite pastry chef whose church doesn’t permit her to drive, to an appointment that she doesn’t want people in her community to know about. A theme in the novel is that the restaurant workers grow in their empathy for each other, which happens between Edgar and Jane.
The Reservation doesn’t have the same emotional depth as Kauffman’s previous two novels–Chorus and I’ll Come to You, which feature family dynamics. I get the sense that the workers in The Reservation are so occupied with their roles in the food-to-table operation–and making a modest living–that they can’t get mired in emotions. That doesn’t stop them from ruminating on some of the bits of information they have about each other or being paranoid about what their co-workers or boss have figured out about them.
Kauffman shows her wit in workplace shenanigans. “This place is full of weirdos,” says one employee about Aunt Orsa’s. Warmth underlies the wit. Even characters who are not likable show endearing traits as they lower their guard.
Like several of Kauffman’s novels that I’ve read, The Reservation has spot-on observations about human nature. Kauffman drops these noticings as nuggets along the way. I’ll share only one here because I don’t want to spoil the impact of her pacing.
Of the bartender at Aunt Orsa’s, Kauffman writes that “he had mastered the two most important aspects of his job: pretending he was listening when he was not listening, and pretending he was not listening when he was.”
Because of how she picks up on human nature, I envision that Kauffman navigates the world in a similar manner.
New Dominion Bookshop, 404 East Main Street, in Charlottesville, will host Rebecca Kauffman for a book event at 7 pm on February 27. Kauffman will participate in Books and Brews at 7 pm, Tuesday, March 10, at Pale Fire Brewing Company, 217 S. Liberty Street, #105, in Harrisonburg. In addition, she will give a reading at 7 pm on March 19 in Martin Chapel at Eastern Mennonite University.
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