Stroh’s Beer was a big name in Detroit and nationally up until the late 20th century, but what was once viewed as one of the country’s fastest-growing companies suddenly collapsed, and Stroh’s Beer disappeared from the national beer landscape. First-time author and fifth generation member of the Stroh family, Frances Stroh, shares how her family lost the largest private beer fortune in America in her new memoir Beer Money: A Memoir of Privelege and Loss.
Frances joins us with Kelly Luce, author of Three Scenarios in which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail this week as we continue the Write A House Whiskey & Words series. The two will join us for a conversation in our Palo Alto store on Thursday, May 19 from 7-9 p.m. All are welcome, please RSVP to us at RSVP_PA@shinola.com.
Frances now lives in San Francisco, but visits Detroit regularly. After receiving an M.A. from Chelsea College of Art in London as a Fulbright Scholar, Frances spent many years as an installation artist before turning to writing. We sat down with her to hear more about her first book and her opinion on the current state of Detroit.
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How long did it take you to write Beer Money and what was the hardest part?
I spent about 4-4 ½ years actually writing this book, including writing a first draft, subsequent drafts, and revisions while working with my editor at HarperCollins. In truth, the hardest part was and continues to be that level of sensitivity that’s required when a writer tackles a memoir that has characters who are real people living in the real world. I worked very hard towards protecting the privacy of my family members in this book, only including details in the book that were relevant for the story.
The book essentially spans my lifetime and focuses on key events that build upon each other, including a complex network of narrative threads with a strong forward momentum. This book is about my coming of age within the Stroh’s family, specifically my coming of age as an artist as the family company was reaching its peak and then heading into a major financial decline. The story is told from my point of view, and is not a definitive text on the Stroh family or the Stroh Brewery.
How did you format your life memories into a memoir?
I decided to write the book in a series of episodic chapters, and each goes into detail about a very specific period in my life where I believe some of the major events took place. There are a lot of years and periods that are not included in the book. I was bringing together the threads of my own trajectory as an artist, my brother Charlie’s life and decline into drugs, and the story of my father’s artistic ambitions, which were ultimately frustrated—all wound into a tapestry that also included the story of the Stroh Brewery Company and how its destiny was inextricably tied to Detroit’s.
My father was an artist at heart, and he left me his iconic photographs in his will. A year ago, I sorted through 12 enormous boxes containing his life’s work, boxes that had sat collecting dust in an attic for decades. My editor and I decided to use some of these images as chapter openers in the book. I included images that were representative of my father’s artistic style, idealized images — portraits of this all-American family. There’s a sense of perfection in the photographs that creates a nice tension with the truth-telling text—the beautiful façade behind which lies a crumbling foundation. I see it as a wonderful collaboration between my father and me, and the reason, I believe, that he left me his photographs in his will.
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Historic photo of Stroh’s Beer in Detroit. (Copyright 1973 The Detroit News, all rights reserved)
Do you still come back to Detroit? What’s the biggest difference compared to when you grew up?
I do come back to Detroit, and I always stay downtown. Detroit is an astonishing story of self-reinvention, and it’s quickly become an impressive hub of creativity and entrepreneurial activity. It’s an extremely exciting place to be, and I love being a part of what’s happening—all the new shops and restaurants being created, the micro-breweries, and all the artists who’ve moved in and turned the city into a hip urban center. Detroit was slowly falling apart throughout my childhood and coming of age—the period represented in Beer Money—and so now, witnessing it reinvent itself seemingly overnight, has been extremely gratifying.
What are your favorite places in Detroit?
Eastern Market
Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
The Detroit Institute of Arts
Pages Bookshop
Selden Standard
The London Chop House
The Rattlesnake Club
Atwater Brewery
Motor City Brewing Works
A portion of proceeds from Beer Money will benefit 826michigan and their new free tutoring center in Detroit — tell us more about that.
826 National’s network of youth writing and tutoring centers has authors come in and volunteer as tutors to help kids with their homework after school. I was volunteering at 826 Valencia here in San Francisco. That’s how I discovered that 826michigan (part of the 826 National network of youth writing and tutoring centers founded by Dave Eggers) is building a new center in Detroit’s Eastern Market (open in October, 2016) so they can expand their free writing and tutoring program offerings to serve even more Detroit students in need.
Not only will they provide after-school homework tutoring, writing workshops, and field trips in the center, they will also train and engage adult volunteers to work one-on-one with students in under-resourced public and charter classrooms across Detroit. 826michigan’s fun and inspiring approach to writing helps every student grow confident in their abilities and know that we want to hear what they have to say. I’m proud to help 826michigan nurture new creative Detroit voices and encourage others to volunteer their time with this organization.
We hope to see you Thursday, May 19 in our Palo Alto store (261 Hamilton Avenue Suite 130)!