Press Release
Printer-friendly page
|
AMERICAN COOKERY
by Laura Kalpakian
St. Martin's Press
September 2006
$23.95/hardcover
ISBN: 0-312-34811-8
Sample recipe
|
|
Contact: Colleen Schwartz
646-307-5563
Colleen.Schwartz@stmartins.com
"Colleen Kalpakian is so entertaining a writer that it takes a while to realize how smart she is. Generous, gritty, sexy, full of lyrical musings, and funny as all get-out."
The New Yorker
Combine food with family, and you have a feast of emotion, drama, and memories. Laura Kalpakian's AMERICAN COOKERY blends these ingredients into a novel as animated as a family reunion and as intimate as a lovers' picnic. AMERICAN COOKERY pairs the joys of cooking with the pleasures of a savory story. Each chapter is followed by a recipe, 27 in all, from the family of Eden Douglass, the novel's central character.
Some of these recipes have a hundred year history, like the Pioneer Gingerbread. Others, like the Chocolate Tangerines and the Figs Napoleon are extraordinary dishes inspired by everyday ingredients, while dishes like Marinda's Fish Tacos with Corn Salsa tingle on the tongue and provide a feast for the eyes.
AMERICAN COOKERY offers readers the enchantments of a character-driven novel, and the appeal of a favorite family cookbook. Readers will go from the armchair to the kitchen to actively recreate the culinary life of Eden Douglass.
Born into a contentious California clan where the women are famous for their cooking and their high-handed ways, Eden Douglass develops an adventurous heart and a hungry mind. She departs from both her faith and family, and elopes to Mexico with the charismatic Matt March of Greenwater Movie Ranch. Matt and Eden create a family and a California legend, throwing unforgettable parties, celebrations where the food is superb, the company lively and diverse. Eden's cooking sustains and connects her extended family and friends—ranchers, restaurateurs, railroad workers, developers, dreamers, migrants, immigrants, natives, sinners, Saints, sidekicks, and film stars. The novel chronicles their stories and gathers their recipes in its pages.
AMERICAN COOKERY gives new meaning to the term "Spaghetti Western".
About the Author
Laura Kalpakian is an accomplished cook who enjoys feeding people who like to eat. All the recipes in AMERICAN COOKERY were created in her home kitchen. The grand-daughter of Armenian immigrants and Latter-day Saints, Laura grew up in Southern California and was educated on both the east and west coasts. Her ten novels and three collections of short fiction have won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pen West Award for Best Short Fiction, a Pushcart Prize and, twice, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Prize.
Also by Laura Kalpakian:
- These Latter Days, John F. Blair Publishing
- The Memoir Club, St. Martin's Press
- Educating Waverley, HarperCollins
- The Delinquent Virgin, Graywolf Press
|
)
