Table of Contents: From Breakfast With Anita Diamant to Dessert With James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings and Insights From Today's Bestselling Authors

by Judy Gelman; Vicki Levy Krupp

  Katherine Howe

  Laura Dandaneau

  SELECTED WOEKS

  The Scrying Glass (2011)

  The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (2009)

  Inspiration In 2005, my husband and I moved into the second floor of a little fisherman's house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, that was first built in 1705. I was studying for my PhD qualifying exams at the time, and I started telling myself stories as a distraction from the stress of my academic work. Historical fiction is rather magical that way; who among us hasn't wondered what it would feel like to be transported to a different time? As I wiled away hours at my desk in this funny antique house, where no angle was ever at ninety degrees, I started imagining myself in that same room at different moments in time. What would be in the room with me? How would it smell? Who would be there, and what would they be doing? The story for The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane started in just these kinds of ruminations. Someone in that very room, when it was brand new and still smelled like freshly cut pine, had probably been present at the Salem witch trial. What kind of world had that person lived in? How did that world feel different from mine? Most of my work evolves from thought experiments just like this one.

  Readers Should Know I am currently at work on another novel which, like Physick Book, will be a story of one of the more macabre corners of New England's past. The novel will take place in Boston in the nineteen teens, a time when the city was starting to look like its modern self but was still very much locked in the nineteenth century. Horse-drawn carts jostled with new electric automobiles; Bostonians poured into the subway to get to work, but still traveled across the ocean by steam ship. The face of the city was changing, growing more crowded, vibrant, and diverse. It was also the end of the spiritualist movement, when many people were passionately curious about the nature of consciousness, of death, and the state of the soul in the afterlife, questions that would grow even more acute after our entry into the Great War. The Scrying Glass will visit one Back Bay family caught in the middle of this historic upheaval, and will ask: if you can see death coming, what do you choose?

  Readers Frequently Ask By far the most common question that I am asked, perhaps because Physick Book is such a magical story, is whether or not I myself believe in magic. Unfortunately, I have a rather opaque response, which is that there are a number of different points of view represented in the book. There are characters who believe fully in magic; there are characters who are devoutly Christian; there are characters who believe only in the power of the human intellect and will; and there are characters who are still making up their minds. I have had the pleasure of meeting readers who respond to each one of these points of view. My fear is that sharing my own opinion would somehow imply that there is one way of reading the story that is more correct than others. For me, the most wonderful thing about fiction is that it creates so many opportunities for discussion, for thought, and for debate, while also having the power to transport us to a different time and place. Different readers experience books differently. I'm much more interested in hearing what my readers have to say.

  Influences on My Writing — Unexpected and Otherwise My favorite author by far is Edith Wharton, which might surprise some people. But it's not as surprising a choice as you might think. Her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence, is in effect a work of historical fiction. It is set in the 1870s, but was written in the 1920s. I admire Wharton's ability to select the one specific detail that can then completely illuminate a given scene, and her facility with writing whole characters who are deeply flawed, even unlikable, but with whom we nevertheless sympathize. I also appreciate that Wharton, like a lot of her contemporaries, also wrote ghost stories. Physick Book moves across a number of different genres of fiction, and seeing Wharton do the same makes me feel emboldened to add a fantastical twist to the historical novel.

  For my next project, I have been reading other novels of old Boston, such as John P. Marquand's The Late George Apley. This story was so moving that I cried at the end despite knowing, from the title, that the main character will die. I have also been revisiting Nathaniel Hawthorne. The House of the Seven Gables is another tale that deals with the lasting aftershocks of the Salem witch panic, and which has a decrepit old house acting as one of the main characters. Physick Book's Milk Street house is in some ways like the impoverished little cottage version of Hawthorne's grand, imposing haunted mansion.

  FISH HOUSE PUNCH AT THE GOAT AND ANCHOR TAVERN

  Makes 12–16 servings

  The colonists who settled North America did not much care for water, as a rule. They drank it when they had no alternatives, but usually preferred something harder, and plenty of it. Apple cider, peach brandy, beer, corn mash, and rum all served to make life a little more pleasurable, and to turn “training days” into very festive occasions indeed. These different liquors would often be served in different combinations. A good example of this is “flip,” a concoction of sweetened beer spiked with rum and then heated with a hot iron. But the most long lasting, and infamous, of these recipes dates from the sociable Schuylkill Fishing Company of Philadelphia, circa 1732. When, in Physick Book, Prue Bartlett meets Robert Hooper in a Marblehead tavern in 1760 to sell her recipe book, they doubtless sealed the deal with something rather like Fish House Punch.

  My mother found this recipe when she was working at the New Haven Historical Society in the seventies, and we make it every year on New Year's Eve. It is delicious and is guaranteed to keep your guest room occupied. I include my own preparation instructions.

  Note: Leftovers can be preserved in the refrigerator for at least a few weeks.

  Water for making ice (approximately 4 cups)

  1½ quarts water (pineapple juice may be substituted for 2 cups of water)

  1¼ cups brown sugar, packed (I prefer dark brown sugar)

  6 lemons

  1 quart Jamaican rum (light or dark will work, but I think dark is better)

  1 pint brandy

  Good dash peach brandy (apricot will also work)

  1 Fill a medium sized plastic container (approximately 4 cups) with water. Place in the freezer to make ice to serve with the punch.

  2 Bring 1½ quarts of water (or water and pineapple juice) and brown sugar to boil in a saucepan. Reduce heat and gently simmer, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes or until the sugar is fully dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat and cool until ready to use.

  3 Cut lemons in half. In the most enormous bowl you can lay your hands on, squeeze the lemons, leaving juice, seeds, and most of the rinds in the bowl and set aside. Pour sugar syrup over the lemon juice and rinds.

  4 Add rum and brandy. Dash liberally with peach brandy “to make it mellow.” Float block of ice in the middle of the punch. Punch should be served cold. Watch out for sudden outbreaks of dancing.

  SALAD OF HERBS AND FLOWERS FROM GRANNA'S GARDEN

  Makes enough for 4 salad-loving people

  Adapted from a seventeenth-century recipe (see below)

  When Connie and Liz, the graduate student protagonist of Physick Book and her closest friend, first arrive at the strange little house on Milk Street in Marblehead, Massachusetts, they are struck by the wide variety of herbs and plants growing in what is essentially a wild kitchen garden. In colonial America, kitchen gardens and forage would have supplied fresh foods to supplement the heavily salted and preserved staples needed for much of the rest of the year. This first recipe is a kitchen garden and forage salad from the seventeenth century, which will nevertheless be appealing to a modern palate.

  Note: Fresh edible flowers such as marigolds, violets, and carnations are available at specialty grocery stores in the produce section. If you can't find edible flowers, you can prepare the salad without them and it will still be delicious. The flowers add a special touch.

  Amounts of mint and sage can vary according to taste; don't be afraid to experiment.

  2 cups (about ½ head) red leaf lettuce, torn into bite-sized p
ieces

  2 cups arugula

  1 cup baby spinach leaves

  2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves (see note)

  1½ teaspoons chopped fresh sage leaves (see note)

  ½ cup fresh edible flowers (see note)

  1 medium cucumber

  Juice of 1 lemon (approximately)

  ½ teaspoon sugar

  6 tablespoons olive oil

  3 tablespoons vinegar (I like apple cider vinegar)

  2 large eggs, hard-cooked and sliced (optional)

  Salt to taste

  Freshly ground black pepper to taste

  1 Rinse lettuce, arugula, and spinach and pat dry. Combine with chopped herbs and set aside in a salad bowl.

  2 Rinse the flowers well, drain, and pat dry. Place them in a small mixing bowl.

  3 Peel the cucumber, slice it in half lengthwise, and remove the seeds. Cut cucumber into wafer-thin slices and add to the flowers until they are about equal in proportion. Squeeze fresh lemon juice on to the flowers and cucumbers, just enough to moisten them.

  4 Sprinkle sugar over the cucumber and flower mixture and add the mixture to the greens. Toss thoroughly with oil and vinegar.

  5 Arrange egg slices around the rim of the salad bowl as a garnish, if desired, and serve with salt and pepper to taste.

  This is a recipe for “Sallet of all Kinds of Herbs” as it appears in A Book of Fruits and Flowers by Thomas Jenner (1653, reprinted in The Compleat New England Huswife, compiled by Elizabeth Stuart Gibson, Albion Press, 1992). Take your Herbs (as the tops of red Sage, Mint, Lettuce, Violets, Marigold, Spinach, & cetera) and pick them very fine in fair water; and wash your flowers by themselves and swing them in a strainer. Then mingle them in a dish with Cucumbers and Lemons pared and sliced: scrape thereon Sugar and put into Vinegar and Oil. Spread your Flowers on top of the Sallet, and take Eggs boiled hard and lay them about the dish.

  NANA'S TAPIOCA PUDDING

  Makes 4 servings

  There is no dessert that speaks of New England more to me than pudding. Connie Goodwin, the protagonist of Physick Book, passes a tense lunch with her dissertation advisor Manning Chilton at the Harvard Faculty Club, and prods listlessly at that institution's famous bread pudding. A “hasty pudding,” made notorious by the Harvard theatrical club of the same name, is really just a term for boiled cornmeal like a polenta, which can either be eaten warm with molasses or maple syrup, or left to set while cold and then fried in butter. Even our local waterside breakfast spot in Marblehead has a rotating selection of daily puddings, ranging from standards like chocolate to regionalisms like Grape Nut. My great grandmother Nana, a firm New Englander frowning her way through many family pictures, has left behind her armchair in my living room and her recipe for tapioca pudding in my kitchen. (My grandmother on the other side, also a New Englander, detested tapioca pudding, calling it “fish eyes and glue.” I rather like it, it must be said.)

  Note: Tapioca pudding is delicious either warm or cold. Warm pudding is very good topped with a little heavy cream.

  Use less sugar if you prefer a less sweet pudding.

  2 large eggs

  1/3 cup sugar (see note)

  2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca

  2 cups whole milk

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

  1 Place eggs in a medium bowl. Add sugar and tapioca and beat by hand, or with an electric mixer until light and creamy.

  2 Place milk in a large saucepan. Pour egg mixture into milk and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Turn heat to medium and stir constantly while mixture comes to a full boil.

  3 Remove mixture from heat, add salt and vanilla, and stir. Pour into serving dish. Cool for 20 minutes. Serve warm or cold. (To serve cold: chill for several hours in the refrigerator, covered with plastic wrap.)

  Joshilyn Jackson

  Herman Esteves

  SELECTED WOEKS

  In Season (2012)

  Backseat Saints (2010)

  The Girl Who Stopped Swimming (2008)

  Between, Georgia (2006)

  gods in Alabama (2005)

  Inspiration I'm Southern to the bone, and there is such a strong oral tradition here. I grew up listening to all the storytellers in my family telling and retelling tales that got taller and wider and more epic every time. I think it soaked in.

  Readers Should Know When people ask me what kind of books I write, I am very often flummoxed. Certainly I have been influenced by Southern gothic writers, but my books are published as “mainstream fiction.” That can mean a huge range of things. I think the best way to describe my work is to call it book club fiction. By this I mean, my novels are character driven, but I love plot. I like twists and turns, but there are also things going on under the story, themes and tropes and images, that can fuel good discussions.

  I write the kinds of books I like to read, and I am a rereader. You could take any one of my novels down to the beach with a rum drink and race through and have a grand time. And if that's all you want, more power to you. Underneath the kissing and the gunplay — and I like to have both, especially within a few pages of each other — I am often asking questions about identity: What makes us who we are? Genes? History? Our choices? I am consistently interested in exploring redemption, the role of women in the arts, and the effects of poverty, be it spiritual or literal.

  Readers Frequently Ask Book clubs often ask if all the things that happen to my characters have actually happened to me. No, of course not. If I'd lived through everything that happens to all the people in all my books, I would be in a small soft room with sleeves that wrap around and fasten in the back.

  Influences on My Writing I love Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee, though I hesitate to say they have influenced me. It feels presumptuous. I certainly hope the profound impact their work has had on me shows in my own.

  ROSE MAE LOLLEY'S CHESS PIE

  Makes 1 (9-inch) pie; 8 servings

  Down here in the South, we have a story about how Chess Pie came into its name. I'm not sure what the country mouse version of an urban legend is — a rural legend? But the story goes, a Yankee fella had a big slice of it at a Southern boarding house, and he liked it so much he asked what the pie was called. The lady of the house said something that sounded to the fella's Connecticut ears like, “It's chess pie.” He went home with the recipe and the wrong name. She was actually saying that it wasn't any kind of pie in particular. It was “just pie.” With her thick accent, she said it like, “jess pie,” and he heard it as “chess.”

  “Just” Pie is an accurate name for this Jackson family favorite … it isn't any specific kind of pie, exactly. It has no fruit or chocolate or any sort of leading flavor. It's just a sweet, rich, gooey, basic pie. Pie reduced to its lowest common denominator.

  My narrator in Backseat Saints, Rose Mae Lolley, is walking calmly in bow-tipped ballet flats and a swirly cotton skirt toward Death by Marriage. She's lost her brave, fierce self — the one we see in gods in Alabama — inside a girl she calls Ro Grandee. Ro is the perfect wife. Cooking is one of the few things she controls, and she makes a version of Chess Pie for her husband while trying to negotiate a truce with him.

  The book begins when Rose meets a gypsy at the airport, one who shares her past and knows her future. The gypsy lays out the tarot cards and tells Ro that her beautiful, abusive husband is going to kill her. Unless she kills him first.

  That pretty much puts the kibosh on any more baking.

  I chose a chess pie for the scene because Rose is from small town Alabama and it is such a quintessentially Southern dessert. My mother always serves it with black coffee to “cut the sweet.” It's a simple pie and all recipes for it are pretty similar, but this is the way my great aunt Gladys always made it, and her Chess Pie is the very best I have ever eaten.

  Note: I mix this pie by hand, with a wooden spoon for true great aunt Gladys authenticity, but an electric mixer works fine too. I only do it that way because I hate
cleaning the mixer.

  ½ cup (1 stick) softened butter (Do not use melted butter or the pie may not set up properly!)

  1 cup granulated sugar

  1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  4 eggs

  1 tablespoon white cornmeal

  ¼ cup buttermilk, evaporated milk, or cream

  1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar (if you use buttermilk you will need 1 teaspoon of vinegar, and if you choose evaporated milk or cream you'll need 1 tablespoon)

  1 9-inch unbaked pie shell (see recipes, p. 72; 235)

  1 Preheat oven to 425°F.

  2 Mix the butter, both sugars, and the vanilla in a large bowl. Stir in the eggs. Add the cornmeal, buttermilk or evaporated milk or cream, and vinegar. Stir until smooth.

  3 Pour batter into pie shell, filling to ¼ inch from top of rim. (You may have some extra batter.) Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 300°F and bake until the pie sets up. (The pie is done when the top is golden brown and the filling is not loose anymore. A little center wiggling is okay since this is a very gooey pie. Don't shake too hard because the bad news is a chess pie can “fall.” The good news is that fallen chess pies taste great!) Some ovens will do the job in 30 minutes, others will take closer to 45.

  4 Let cool. Serve with strong black coffee.

  Hillary Jordan

  William Coupon

  SELECTED WOEKS

  Mudbound (2008)

  Inspiration Mudbound was inspired by stories about my grandparents' farm, but the novel grew into something much larger than the family drama I'd originally envisioned once my black characters started to speak. Race is America's great unhealed wound, and I believe that the only way to heal it is through fuller understanding. I wanted to paint a vivid picture of how things really were during the Jim Crow era by showing it from multiple points of view: black and white, male and female, educated and illiterate, oppressor and oppressed.