In the tradition of Rich Cohen's Sweet and Low and Sean Wilsey's Oh the Glory of it All, a memoir of a city, an industry, and a dynasty in decline, and the story of a young artist's struggle to find her way out of the ruins
Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
But behind the beautiful façade lay a crumbling foundation. Detroit's economy collapsed with the retreat of the automotive industry to the suburbs and abroad, and the Stroh family found their wealth and legacy disappearing. As their fortune dissolved in a little over a decade, the family was torn apart internally by divorce and one family member's drug bust; disagreements over the management of the business; and disputes over the remaining money they possessed. Even as they turned against one another, looking for a scapegoat on whom to blame the unraveling of their family, they could not anticipate that even far greater tragedy lay in store.
Stroh's memoir is elegantly spare in structure and mercilessly clear-eyed in its self-appraisal-at once a universally relatable family drama and a great American story.
"Of course, the Strohs' story is fascinating in itself. But what makes this memoir special is Frances Stroh's clear, brave voice. Free of regret or judgment, she renders even her family's darkest moments with grace and love. A page-turner in the very best sense."
"Beer Money is one of those memoirs you neither put down nor forget. I'll remember Frances Stroh's family-and the beautifully candid, honest and often unforgettable voice she uses to describe them-for a long time. I was very moved by this book."
"Beer Money, the memoir of the fifth-generation family member, Frances Stroh…Stroh's absorbing memoir suggests that most cocoons are permeable and that privilege is relative…an ambivalent understanding of a complicated birthright, and none of its drama feels like an airing of dirty laundry."
"Stroh, of the Stroh brewing dynasty, captures the downfall of this empire with candor and power…Stroh effortlessly and elegantly weaves in her own stories of sitting next to Annie Lennox in a Hare Krishna retreat center, her days at boarding school, her drug use, and her deep love and ambivalent feelings for her father. Stroh's compelling memoir vividly portrays the aching permanence of loss and the palpability of hope that accompanies starting over."
"Frances Stroh's memoir, Beer Money, chronicles the unraveling of the 150-year-old Stroh Brewing Company, her fourth-generation brewery family and, in the background, its home city of Detroit…With Beer Money, she is on her way to a fresh new writing career-perhaps a riches-to-rags-to-riches story in the making."
"In Beer Money, Frances Stroh takes us on a fascinating-and often chilling-journey into the world of dark privilege. In prose that is both beautiful and unflinching, Stroh tells a riveting story about the fall of an American family, an American city, and possibly the American Dream itself."
"Detroit's decadeslong public death spiral mirrors the steady dissolution of one of the city's most prominent clans: the Stroh family of brewers…The author's family might have successfully burned through a massive fortune, but they squandered a lot more than that. A sorrowful, eye-opening examination of familial dysfunction."
