Dear Reader,
Jane Ward is the author of Hunger and The Mosaic Artist. In her latest novel, In the Aftermath, a family suffers a heartbreaking tragedy in the wake of the bursting lending bubble of 2008. Loved ones who are left behind to pick up the pieces learn, as they struggle to remake their worlds, that there is power in forgiveness and unlimited possibility in the unknown.
Jane has been a contributing writer for the online regional and seasonal food magazine Local In Season and a blogger and occasional host of cooking videos for MPN Online, an internet recipe resource affiliated with several newspapers across the country. Although a Massachusetts native, Jane recently settled in Chicago after returning to the US from Switzerland.
Jane is giving away five copies of In the Aftermath to readers, email: jane@janeaward.com
Along the Way, I Like to Talk to People
"Nice ink," said the woman who was clearing the folding table outside a food stall at the Taos Pueblo.
This was several years ago now. I had just ordered a quick lunch and had taken a seat at that table set in the shade. It was a welcome rest. The pueblo that August was an expanse of sunbaked earth, everything cooked to one shade of tan or another, from the dust covering the grassless ground to the adobe structures to the straw flecks in the clay.
The woman stopped wiping down the table and took a closer look at my calf, its tattoo. "Not everyone has an artichoke inked on their leg," she added. "Are you a chef?"
"No," I said. "Not at all. I write books. And sometimes I write about food."
The Native American cook and her daughter brought my lunch at that moment. A taco served Tiwa-style, a puffy round of fry bread topped with spiced ground beef, lettuce and cheese. And a plain piece of fry bread for dessert, still glistening with the sheen of hot fat and calling out to be sweetened with the honey or powdered sugar or cinnamon set down at the center of the checked vinyl tablecloth.
I wasn't baking for a living anymore but my curiosity about different types of bread remained.
"How do you make this?" I asked the cook, pointing to the taco's shell.
She and her daughter took seats at the table, and in short order I was taught how to make the dough for Tiwa fry bread: white flour, a handful of whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt, water.
"That's it. The ground beef," she added, "is equally easy, browned off with my chile powder mixture and then thickened with atole flour. Not the way everyone else does it, but my way."
I learned a lot that day. The passion for cooking and teaching others to cook crisscrosses the country--the globe--and the food talk that stems from this passion is informative.
It is also disarming. Over a meal, people will share likes and dislikes; personal memories about growing up, about their parents, about their friends; they will reveal to you how they like to live, what they like to do, what they like to eat and how they cook favorite meals. By speaking this common language of food, we connect. For fiction writers especially, making a connection that helps us understand others is something to treasure.
-- Jane Ward
Email Jane and welcome her to the book club, and when you do, you'll be entered in the drawing for one of five copies of her new book, In the Aftermath, email: jane@janeaward.com
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
AUTHORBUZZ: Discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.
TWICE A DAUGHTER (NONFICTION) by Julie Ryan McGue
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to grow up without any sense of your family history? As a child whenever I crawled into bed at night, I wondered who were my birth parents, and why had they placed my twin sister and me for adoption? It took a breast biopsy at 48 for me to get serious about researching my closed adoption. My memoir is about my five-year search to locate my birth relatives. Some of the secrets I discovered were literally right next door.
I'm giving away five copies, to enter the drawing, click on the link to Authorbuzz and the book jacket to enter or email me at: julie@juliemcgueauthor.com
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on TWICE A DAUGHTER to read more and to email author Julie Ryan McGue, you'll get a reply.
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