The Red Door: An Historical Memoir of The Squirrel Hill Cafe
The Red Door is a very Pittsburgh book — informal, down-to-earth, honest, with a big heart. But it is also a very American book — the Squirrel Hill Cafe is a classic representation of the “Third Place” that builds community, a place that is not work, and is not home, an in between place where new friends are made, and new memories, in an atmosphere that creates a neutral leveling of status and baggage.
This book is a wonderful mosaic of storytelling, history, detective work, research, bullshit, and photographs that together tell the story of a memorable institution.
— Jim Daniels, Thomas Stockham University Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University and author of numerous collections of poetry and fiction, most recently The Perp Walk, 2019.
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Testimonials
In The Red Door, Leslie Mcilroy and Jan Cavrak tell the smoky, intimate story of a Pittsburgh neighborhood bar. The Squirrel Cage is many things to many people, and here they get their 15 minutes of bar story fame. Of course, all good bar stories end with a shot or a beer, or in this case, a shot and a beer on a bar stool with the light fading through the front windows. The quiet heroine of this tale is Jan Cavrak, who has seen it all and back again. Listen to her when she says keep your tank full and your apron on.
— Sherrie Flick, a Pittsburgh-based whiskey drinker and author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness and two short story collections, Whiskey, Etc. and Thank Your Lucky Stars
Through exceptional storytelling, The Red Door: An Historical Memoir of The Squirrel Hill Cafe, by Jan Cavrak and Leslie Anne Mcilroy, captures a small and often overlooked slice of American life. You hear the conversations, some discreet, others loud and brash. You smell the strangely intoxicating mix of cigarettes, fryer grease and cheap cologne. You see and feel the customers and characters. But, most of all, you wish there was a Squirrel Cage in every city, a place where all are welcome and accepted, a home away from home.
— Rege Behe, Pittsburgh writer and journalist; former book editor, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review