The Baker's Son: My Life in Business

“The American question gets a great, real-life look in The Baker’s Son . . . Hawthorne’s story is at once inspirational and revelatory.” —Publishers Weekly

The Baker’s Son is a charming and well-crafted memoir by the co-founder of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill, the hugely successful Jamaican-owned and -run enterprise that reaches from Massachusetts to Florida with over 120 franchise locations. Today the Golden Krust brand represents the most lucrative Caribbean business ever established in America.

An independently owned family enterprise, Golden Krust was established in 1989 by members of the extended Hawthorne family. Within a few short years, Golden Krust developed into a very successful business. The original inspiration for the company came from the family patriarch, Ephraim Hawthorne, who for many years ran a successful bakery in the secluded hamlet of Border, in the rural parish of St. Andrew in Jamaica.

The Baker’s Son is a deeply moving account that tells the story of an immigrant family from rural Jamaica that relocated to the Bronx in the 1980s. Starting from humble beginnings, and after weathering several major crises along the way, personal as well as professional, the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree. Not content to rest on its well-deserved laurels, the family has, in addition, established an innovative and very successful philanthropic foundation to give back to the community.

As much a “business memoir” as it is a “spiritual memoir,” the book records a profound journey of the author from his childhood within the Hawthorne family in Jamaica to his spiritual rebirth and conversion in the recent past. The author attributes the real source of his success in business to his wife, siblings, and children, and to the deep Christian faith inculcated in him by his father and mother from a young age.