American Cookery: A Novel - Hardcover

Kalpakian, Laura

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312348118 ISBN 13: 9780312348113

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2006

Synopsis

Animated as a family reunion, intimate as a lovers' picnic, American Cookery serves up tradition and innovation in a family novel based on the joy of cooking. The story is complete with twenty-seven recipes from the life and tumultuous times of Eden Douglass.
 
Eden was born in 1920 into a contentious California tribe, and the ingredients of her life include her grandmother's reserve, her aunt's instinct for action, and her mother's foggy warmth.  Seasoned with spicy herbs, and a few bitter ones, simmered and stirred over time, these instincts shape her destiny.
 
Two strong-willed women--her grandmother Ruth Douglass and her aunt Afton Lance--struggle to pull Eden from the comfy sloth of her parents' home.  Her ill-matched parents drift toward financial collapse, and her father, pursuing phantom wealth, takes the family to an Idaho mining town.  He finds fulfillment in Idaho, but Eden's mother breaks down, and Eden must shoulder the household drudgery, burdens not in keeping with her aspirations to be a journalist.

Eden's adventurous spirit takes her far from her faith and family.  She falls in love in wartime London and rides a motorcycle across war-torn Belgium.  After the war, still reeling from a devastating loss, Eden returns to Southern California and is hired by a newspaper, only to confront insidious opposition, yet find an unexpected ally.
 
Then, in 1952, fate puts Eden Douglass in the path of a runaway horse at Greenwater Movie Ranch, where they're filing a B-movie Western.  She falls flat on her face, and Matt March lifts her from the dust.  Charming and charismatic, with good looks, cowboy boots, and appetite for life, and his VistaVision of the Western, Matt ignites Eden's passion.  Three months later, they elope to Mexico.
 
In these exuberant California boom years, Eden nourishes Matt's dreams, even though they are sauced with secrets and larded with debt.  He tests Eden's strengths and his children's love.
 
A big-cast book, American Cookery fulfills the wide embrace of its title.  The novel chronicles the stories behind family recipes and the lives that touch Eden's--lives of horse thieves, ranchers, railroad men, developers, dreamers, migrants, immigrants, natives, Latter-Day Saints, sinners, silent-film stars, sidekicks, and stunt people.
 
The good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful emerge in these pages as American Cookery serves up the whole gorgeous banquet of life.

About this title

From the Back Cover

American Cookery bursts with the joy of cooking and the spice of lifeÂ--a  feast of friendship and family.
 
High-spirited Eden Douglass is born into a contentious California clan full of headstrong women who vie for her loyalty.   The Douglass women are known to borrow trouble as well as time and money. As a child, Eden's hungers are satisfied with merely having enough to eat.  As an adult, her appetite for adventure leads her to serve on the European Front, to elope to Mexico with a charismatic film maker, and become a producer in the golden age of television. Eden's life is seasoned with a rich cast of lively characters. All have stories. Some have legends.
 
Each chapter is followed by a recipe. Readers can share and savor Emotional Cornbread, Book Club Gingerbread, Parti-Colored Salsa, Figs Napoleon, Stella's Sauce and Ginny Doyle's Cowgirl Chili.   American Cookery celebrates those women and men whose cooking forges connection across time and miles and through generations.
 
Animated as a family reunion, intimate as a lover's picnic, American Cookery is a novel to relish and share, satisfying stories in many flavors, and one woman's journey through tumultuous times. Praise for American Cookery
Â"A prize-winning Seattle writer cooks up a tasty feast of a tenth novelÂ...this fine fictional tale is complemented by tempting recipes.Â"
--Seattle Post-Intelligencer
 
Â"Food provides the structure on which Kalpakian builds this novel of a twentieth-century woman's lifeÂ...a satisfying read.Â"
--Booklist
 
Praise for Kalpakian
Â"Kalpakian is generous, gritty, sexy, full of lyrical musings, and funny as all get-out.Â"
--The New Yorker
 
Â"Whatever happened to old-fashioned stories, with fleshed-out characters, well-crafted plots, strong themes, and palpable atmosphere? Laura Kalpakian, for one, is still writing them.Â"
--Wall Street Journal
 
Â"Kalpakian creates inspiring, thought-provoking, even bewitching characters.Â"
--Baltimore Sun
 Laura Kalpakian has received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and the PEN/West Award for Best Short Fiction. American Cookery is her tenth novel.

About the Author

Laura Kalpakian has received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and the PEN/West Award for Best Short Fiction.  American Cookery is her tenth novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0312348118
• ISBN 13: 9780312348113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432