Lavender in Your Lemonade: A Funny and Touching COVID Diary

Chris Erskine is the master of domestic dramedy.

For three decades in the Los Angeles Times, Erskine’s columns explored modern fatherhood and family life, from the absurd to the mundane, the sublime to the heartbreaking. Now, with Lavender in Your Lemonade: A Funny and Touching Covid Diary, he tackles the New Normal with his chronicle of daily life under the frustrating, terrifying, and sometimes antic strictures of a worldwide pandemic.

No, it’s not funny. And yet somehow, in Erskine’s hands, it is.

Or at least it feels more tolerable.

With elegant prose and an eye for telling detail, Erskine draws simple truths from the infinite complexities of the human condition, eight hundred words at a time. In the great tradition of Erma Bombeck, Mike Royko, Dave Barry, and Bob Greene, Erskine shows us ourselves in a funhouse mirror.

Reviews

“The worst of times brought out the best of him.”—Peter Mehlman, former “Seinfeld” writer/producer, author of #MeAsWell and Mandela Was Late

“Every word, every sentence Chris Erskine writes makes me want to salute him with two fingers of Jameson in shared grief, love,
laughter, and life. And now he's writing about the plague of our time? Time to toast with the whole bottle.” —Gustavo Arellano, LATimes, author of Taco USA

“If I have to come and hand-sell this book to each of you, I’ll do it. This book is so funny and so good—and so short and so elegantly published—that you will be thrilled to own it. I tracked the guy down with a fan letter. A+” —Caitlin Flanagan, contributing editor of The Atlantic and former staff writer at The New Yorker

“Erskine is funny and relatable in his writing...He touches on the joys and fears that come part and parcel with having small, dependent people living in your house, making the personal universal through the feelings evoked within each column.” — BookNAround

“However you slice it, fatherhood has provided Erskine with some great material.— Parents Magazine

“I tried to imagine the columnist at his writing desk, crafting raw grief into words as clear and beautiful as crystal, yet warm and relatable to the readers peering into his shock and pain.” — L.A. Parent

Author Bio

Chris Erskine has been chronicling life in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. As a columnist and staffer for the Los Angeles Times, he wrote for the sports, travel, entertainment and lifestyle sections. Best known for his characterizations of suburban family life, he is the author of three other books of essays: Surviving Suburbia, Man of the House and Daditude.