Iliana Regan - Fieldwork: A Foragers Memoir

I found myself dreaming the entire read that I was walking behind Iliana through the woods she calls home and through her vivid, beautifully told recollections of the past. The perfect companion piece to Burn the Place.

Scott Mosier, writer, director, and producer

In fierce, tender prose, Fieldwork continues and deepens Iliana Regans investigations of DNA, family, her body, and all things worth foraging in the natural world, revealing herself as one of that worlds most lucid defenders.

James McManus, writer, teacher, and poker historian

Fieldwork is: you and the irreplaceable Iliana Regan, using bolt cutters to break into the dark barn of memory.

Jesse Ball, prize-winning author of A Cure for Suicide

Fieldwork is the second book by Iliana Regan and what a superb follow-up it is to her highly acclaimed Burn the Place. This is not just a book about IIianas love of the forest and the things that reside in this magical place but its also an intimate reflection on what makes her who she is, and with that we can fully relate.

April Bloomfield, chef

Burn the Place is a chef memoir only in the sense that the author turned out to be a chef. More rightly, it belongs on a shelf with the great memoirs of addiction, of gender ambivalence and queer comingof-age, of the grand disillusionment that comes from revisiting, as a clear-eyed adult, the deceptive perfection of childhood.

The New Yorker

[A] blistering yet tender story of a woman transforming Midwestern cooking, in a fresh voice all her own.

Publishers Weekly

A chef-savant unlike any other in the U.S. Eater

With this deeply personal work, Iliana reminds us that there is great strength in vulnerability. Her story is one of resilience, determination, and vision.

Ren Redzepi, chef and co-owner of noma

It turns out that Iliana Regan writes the way she cooks: with a voice thats bold and soulful, tender and tough, impossible to ignore, and utterly her own. Burn the Place is much more than an account of hustling in the kitchen. Its a story about identity and addiction. Its about getting creative and becoming a boss. And its full of scenes of gothic drama that still give me goosebumps when I think of them.

Jeff Gordinier, author of Hungry

Renowned chef Iliana Regan is self-taught, charismatic, delightfully foul-mouthed, and utterly devoid of pretension as she parallels her ascent in the culinary world with a past strewn with AA chips, jail cell stints, and brutal family losses. This groundbreaking memoir reinvents the well-worn trope of the bad boy superstar chef, presenting us instead with a palpably vulnerable, complicatedly feminist, and sexy-queergirl genius who takes no prisoners, including herself.

Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men and Every Kind of Wanting

Iliana Regan is Alice. The fields and farms where she forages for ingredients comprise her Wonderland. We are along for the ride, and it behooves us not to be late. Chicago Tribune

A MIDWAY BOOK

AGATE

CHICAGO

Copyright 2023 by Iliana Regan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the publisher.

The events expressed in this book, while mostly true, were composed from the authors memory. Some of the names and identities of people in this book have been altered or composited for the sake of simplicity and to protect privacy.

First printed in January 2023

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 23 24 25 26 27

Cover design by Morgan Krehbiel

Author photo by Sara Stathas

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Regan, Iliana, author.

Title: Fieldwork / by Iliana Regan.

Description: Chicago : Agate, 2023. | A Midway book.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022019146 (print) | LCCN 2022019147 (ebook) | ISBN 9781572843189 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781572848696 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Regan, Iliana, 1979- | Cooks--United States--Biography. | Restaurateurs--United States--Biography.

Classification: LCC TX649.R44 A3 2023 (print) | LCC TX649.R44 (ebook) | DDC 641.5092 [B]--dc23/eng/20220705

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022019146

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022019147

Midway is an imprint of Agate Publishing. Agate books are available in bulk at discount prices. For more information, visit agatepublishing.com.

This book is dedicated to my ancestral family, my immediate family, and to the forests I love.

You dont want to ever be frightened in the woods, Nick. There is nothing that can hurt you.

Not even lightning? Nick asked.

No, not even lightning. If there is a thunderstorm get out into the open. Or get under a beech tree. Theyre never struck.

Never? Nick asked.

I never heard of one, said his father.

Gee, Im glad to know that about beech trees, Nick said.

Ernest Hemingway, Three Shots

THE MEN CAME IN THEIR PICKUP TRUCKS. I KNOW because I saw them. Big silver and white pickups: Super Dutys, Platinums, King Ranches. Trucks with a four-ton payload3500s. Some trucks had double wheels under the beds that might have held even more. I learned those were called dualies. Some trucks were so big they had diesel engines, rumbling while coming in over the washboard pathway. The men had mustaches. The mustaches were a logging thing, Ive heard, and it seemed true. I read that about loggers and mustaches in Suzanne Simards book, Finding the Mother Tree. Simard came from a family of loggers and worked in the industry. She wrote that the mustaches came along with the job. In addition to the mustaches, the loggers Ive seen often wore aviator sunglasses.

The first of them to arrive were the surveyors. They came to test the soil and design a reforestation plan. But you know, the forest didnt need a plan to accomplish what it has done for the last hundreds of millions of years. The timber companies turned it to monocropsits mostly pine out here. If you look around, youll realize its everywhere, this sort of fixation on product. And it wasnt the loggers fault. I wouldnt say they were the enemy because they werent. Its far deeper than that.

The surveyors tied neon orange and blue plastic ribbons around the boles. After they left another guy arrived. He didnt wear sunglasses but squinted against the sun instead. He got out of the trucks cab, a smaller truck this time. He shook a spray paint canister that went rattle-clank. All the oldest, biggest trees got an X. The ones with the ribbons didnt. The thin ones were left alone.

From where I stood watching, feeling helpless, it seemed to me it didnt make a difference which tree was tagged or ribboned. The map was clear. Go for the heart.