Thank you to the amazing Linda Rodriguez, poet and author of
Every Hidden Fear (and two more Skeet
Bannion novels) for inviting me to guest blog.
I confess, I have my fair share of murderous instincts, just
like anybody else.
As a cookbook author and food writer turned debut novelist,
I could have had a character stab someone with a chef’s knife or drown someone
in a vat of barbecue sauce or poison someone with arsenic in almond paste.
But none of those scenarios felt right to me. (But you can tell I thought about them.)
I finally realized I’m not a writer who kills. I’m a writer
who bakes.
When I started working on The Cake Therapist, I got sidetracked and then mesmerized by one of
life’s mysteries—how flavor touches something deep inside each of us. How a
challenging or abrasive flavor reminds us that life is hard. How a luscious
flavor affirms that life is good.
How a bite of fresh banana starts our mornings with a hint
of the exotic, memories of packed lunches for school field trips, and sense of
safe adventure.
How potent and lingering spice, like nutmeg or star anise,
evokes a sense of nostalgia or, at deeper levels, remembered grief for loved
ones we have lost.
How strong coffee and dark chocolate get us going again
after any of life’s difficulties. Starting out as raw cacao or coffee beans,
they had to go through fire to be great. So do we.
Like music or scent, flavor can tell a story because it evokes
emotion. And emotion is at the heart of every story.
Flavor and emotion are at the heart of mine. My main
character “Neely” is a talented pastry chef who leaves her New York life behind
to open a bakery in her Midwestern hometown. She is reinventing her life, just
as her blue collar town has reinvented itself, improbably, as a bridal
district. Former mom and pop grocery stores, the five-and-dime, and the old
library have been refitted as bridal gown, wedding invitation, and honeymoon
travel boutiques.
Neely’s bakery fits right in. Her extra gift is both a help
and a hindrance. She can “read” people as flavors. Like contemporary musician Pharrell
Williams and the late writer Vladimir Nabokov who experienced sounds as colors,
Neely has that fusion or “synesthesia” of the senses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia
When Neely meets with a special bakery or wedding cake client,
she senses a flavor, which leads to a feeling and then that person’s story.
She’s not in the therapy business, however. She’s in the
bakery business. So, she adds the perfect flavor combination to a cake or a
cookie to wordlessly help that person mourn a loss, celebrate a happy occasion,
or just move on with life.
Yet the sour flavor of anger, the “feeling” behind
alternating flashback chapters, starts to intensify. Neely can’t figure out
why.
This is the dark, secret filling—the mystery—that the cake
therapist has to resolve. It’s a feeling
and a story, told over generations, that has had a long-term, caustic effect on
those involved.
It’s a flavor that could have killed, eventually.
But I’m a writer who bakes.
About Judith Fertig
Judith Fertig is an
award-winning and bestselling cookbook author, specializing in baking, barbecue,
and the regional cuisine of the Heartland—where flavor and storytelling
combine. After college at Wittenberg University and Ohio State, she studied at École de Cuisine La Varenne (formerly in Paris)
and The Cordon Bleu in London plus The
Iowa Writers Workshop. Her food and lifestyle writing has appeared in The
New York Times, The London Sunday Times, Country Homes & Interiors, Bon
Appetit, Food & Wine, Natural Awakenings, Better Homes & Gardens,
Saveur, Country Living, and Cooking
Light. Fertig has appeared on the Food Network and many TV and radio programs.
Her debut novel is The Cake Therapist (Berkley, June 2015).
FB: Judith Fertig, Author
Twitter: @JudithFertig
