Georgetown Entrepreneur Tells All: The Scoop on Life and Bagels

The Washingtonian Magazine is calling Mary Bealle Adler's tale of running the Georgetown Bagelry amidst personal terrors "a Washington book like no other." 

The bagel company is now operated out of Bethesda, Md., but it got its start on Georgetown's M Street. And in her book, Adler tells all the gritty details of how she took the helm. 

Who Scooped My bagel? One Woman's Story of Love, Loss and Success starts off with the bagel as a metaphor for life. 

"I have faced my share of difficulties and learned along the way to develop a strong crust on the outside while retaining softness inside my heart and spirit," Adler writes in the first chapter. "Just like my bagels." 

When she arrived in Washington, D.C., she had her sights on studying poverty law and women's rights at the Antioch Law School. 

But that all changed when she started to date the owner, "a big guy with a seemingly big heart," of a Georgetown bagel shop and got pregnant.  

From then on, the story "amid baking tips and the inspiring keys to her success, is an account of a trip to hell and back, a horror story of marital distress, physical abuse, alcoholism, abortion, divorce, and debt," wrote Carol Ross Joynt in the Washingtonian piece. 

"But the book ends upbeat," Joynt wrote. 

Now Adler is the owner and CEO of Georgetown Bagelry, as well as a creativity coach, helping people follow their dreams. 

On the book's Facebook page, Adler credits her success to learning that she has the "self-confidence" to handle anything. She writes: "Follow your heart and don't dream to small."