I will admit that the first thing that drew me to this book was the title. I then learned that the story was about two families who are fighting over fried chicken. Boom! I was hooked, and set out on a chicken adventure — The Chicken Sisters, by K.J. Dell’Antonia.

A small town in Kansas is the home of two fried chicken restaurants run by separate families. Both make fried chicken — one pan fries and the other deep fries. The sisters who now own the restaurants hail from the two families who have been feuding for over 100 years as to who makes the best fried chicken. is it Chicken Mimi’s or is it Chicken Frannie’s.

The feud reached the boiling point when one of the daughters — Amanda — married the son of the other family. It has reached the point where neither restaurant is making money. So Amanda reaches out to a food network that features a program — Food Wars — that pits rival restaurants against each other. The network selects the two restaurants for their program. That’s when the fun and fury begin.

At the same time that Amanda is appealing to Food Wars, her sister Mae loses her NYC television job. She doesn’t particularly care about her mother’s restaurant, but she sees Food Wars as being a stepping stone to a national career.

The competition starts out slowly, but quickly becomes, well, a war. What was once a simple rivalry becomes a mud-slinging and finger pointing disaster. Will this family be saved? Will the restaurants survive? Who will win the chicken war?

The story is mostly a light-hearted look at small town politics and the importance people place on their local restaurants. Underneath, however, there are some important messages about social media, mental illness, and the importance of families.

I enjoyed The Chicken Sisters very much.

Here is a link to the book.