American Cookery

by Laura Kalpakian

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.
 
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.

(From publisher)

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.