Kevin Boehm memoir dishes on secrets and service

Spoiler alert: Over an omelet at a Springfield diner, 18-year-old Boehm learns that the man sitting across from him — not the dad he grew up with — is his biological father.

• Days later, he'd leave for college in Champaign and then on a cross-country journey to open 40 restaurants — including BOKA, Girl and the Goat and Momotaro — searching for a home, purpose and happiness.

The inspiration: "I read a portion of my Mom's journals after she passed, and it felt like many of the secrets she kept slowly ate away at her soul," Boehm tells Axios. "It encouraged me to avoid suffering a similar fate."

Biggest surprise: "How natural [writing] felt. There wasn't a day I didn't look forward to writing. It had the quiet familiarity of something that had always been a part of me. I was just waiting for time and permission."

The takeaways: "A few things," Boehm tells Axios. "That blind ambition can be detrimental to your development as a human.

• That the real you buried under your avatar may be the opposite of what you have let everyone else see,
• That hitting rock bottom can be the ultimate gift."

What's next: Boehm will read from and speak about his book at Anderson Bookstore in Naperville on Jan. 27.