Winner of 2019 Distinguished Favorite for Memoir from the Independent Press Awards.  After World War II, the United States evolved economically through an explosive combination of opportunities, entrepreneurs, and growing industries. By 1954, families began to enjoy the new pastime of evening television and increased the demand for a new product known as frozen TV dinners. A poor father and farmer from Wendell, Idaho had the audacity and vision to start his own trucking company to haul and deliver frozen food across the country and subsequently built an impressive fortune that included several successful businesses. Elaine Ambrose, a bestselling author, departs from her award-winning humor to show life as this man's daughter. She chronicles the struggles her family experienced under the strain of an absent father and describes the high tensions and familial rivalries that arose after his untimely death. Using actual courtroom transcripts, she tells of the brutal courtroom drama that propelled her mother into dementia. She hopes to offer hope and inspiration to others who endured a contaminated family story to prove that anyone may grow beyond painful memories and find success, happiness, and warmth for themselves. elaineambrose.com/blog/author-wins-global-writing-awards-in-three-genres-in-three-years/ "Full of luscious details, clear-eyed compassion, and enduring joy, Ambrose's memoir gives us an insider's view of one family's rocky pursuit of the American Dream. Even when she is relating personal stories of conflict, loss, and grief, Ambrose does so with a survivor's voice made strong by experience, stubbornness, humor, and love." Kim Barnes Author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Memoir: In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country "Elaine Ambrose and I share the need to write as a tangible expression of life's milestones. This tell-all memoir, Frozen Dinners, will resonate with anyone who has endured family dysfunction and will defrost the hearts of readers everywhere." Joely Fisher, actress,singer, and author of Growing Up Fisher "Elaine Ambrose's tense memoir, Frozen Dinners ... paints a complex portrait of a twentieth-century Midwestern family... Illustrative prose brings the anecdotes to life, describing the Idaho landscape and muddy potato farms with poetic imagery." Foreword Reviews “ …clear-eyed, evenhanded, concise, and loaded with fascinating details about the struggles and joys of growing up female in the fifties and sixties.” - Booklist This memoir first percolated in my mindmore than twenty years ago, and I adjusted the intensity of my writing for several years, often jumping into themess of words only to quit and relinquish everything to the back burner. How doI, as a humor writer, rip open the scars to inspect the painful drama of thepast? I couldn't finish it, so I sporadically wrote additional chapters for themanuscript while working on humorous books, including Menopause Sucks , MidlifeCabernet , and Midlife Happy Hour . My mother's death in 2014, followed three years laterby the death of my younger brother George, convinced me to complete the book. I am grateful for the hundreds of employees of Montana Express, Ambrose Distributing, AmbroseFarms, and FarmHouse Restaurant for helping my parentsestablish and operate several successful businesses. My childhood family is gone, but I recognize the best traits ofmy parents and George in my children and grandchildren. The long haul journeyisn't over yet. Elaine Ambrose is an award-winning, bestselling author of eight books. Midlife Cabernet won two national humor awards, PublishersWeekly reviewed it as "laugh-out-loud funny!" and Foreword Reviews wrote that the book was "an argument for joy"similar to Erma Bombeck. Her book, MidlifeHappy Hour , was a finalist for Foreword INDIES Book of the Year and won First Place for Midlife from the Independent Publisher Award. Her children's book, Gators & Taters , won an award for Children's Literature from the 2018 Independent Press Awards. Her bilingual children's book, The MagicPotato - La Papa Mágica , won a Silver Medal from the 2018 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards and was selected by the Idaho State Board of Education for the statewide curriculum. Her memoir, Frozen Dinners, was released in November 2018, and Foreword Reviews wrote ""Illustrative prose brings the anecdotes to life, describing theIdaho landscape and muddy potato farms with poetic imagery." Ambrose's award-winning syndicated blog posts are published on several websites, and one humorous post became one of the most-read posts in the history of The Huffington Post . Her blog posts won two humor writing awards from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. An avid traveler, Elaine has visited 32 countries around the world. Elaine lives with her patient husband in Eagle, Idaho.Find her books, blogs, and speaking events at elaineambrose.com.