American Cookery »

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.

American Cookery bursts with the joy of cooking and the spice of life—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

"A prize-winning Seattle writer cooks up a tasty feast of a tenth novel…this fine fictional tale is complemented by tempting recipes."

—Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Food provides the structure on which Kalpakian builds this novel of a twentieth-century woman's life…a satisfying read."

—Booklist

Praise for Kalpakian

"Kalpakian is generous, gritty, sexy, full of lyrical musings, and funny as all get-out."

—The New Yorker

"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."

—Wall Street Journal

"Kalpakian creates inspiring, thought-provoking, even bewitching characters."

—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.

Library Journal

Life is like an impromptu recipe-you make the best out of what ingredients you have on hand. This is the overriding theme of Kalpakian's engrossing new novel, which follows the life of Eden Douglass, born into a strict Mormon family in St. Elmo, CA, but determined to follow her own path. Interspersed between chapters are recipes from Eden's family, friends, and acquaintances. The recipes are more than just a gimmick, for they are important touchstones in Eden's life and highlight the characters of their creators. Equally important, they demonstrate the literal and figurative melting pot that is America, more specifically California, in the 20th century, with Mexican, Armenian, Native American, and other ethnic groups flavoring the stew. The book is full of memorable characters, from the determined Eden herself to her Aunt Afton Lance, wielding power and control as the center of the family, and Eden's drunken, deluded mother, Kitty. Recommended for all public libraries.-Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.