While researching The Winemaker’s Wife, I spent time in the Champagne region of France, where the novel takes place. I was especially lucky to be the guest of a lovely young woman named Virginie Bergeronneau, who works at her family-owned champagne house, Champagne F. Bergeronneau-Marion, based in the town of Ville-Dommange, where the fictional Champagne […] Read More

My childhood dog was an Airedale terrier named Muggs, to whom I dedicated my book. She loved pancakes more than any other food, and, in fact, her last meal was “hotcakes,” as my mother calls them. My current dog, Comet, was cut from the same cloth apparently, because she loves pancakes as well; in our […] Read More

Every recipe in my family cookbook, Cooking With My Sisters, has a name, and not just the one to describe the food, but a name designated to the creator, the cook, or the person in the kitchen who took the age old instructions handed down on bits of paper and at long last, perfected the dish. […] Read More

  From Delia Owens: Cooking is a huge part of Kya’s life in this novel. The reader gets to hear about all of the meals she makes for herself because she has to learn to cook and become independent at an incredibly young age. These recipes are some of her favorites and are a part […]

      In Lifelines, Louise falls in love with German drummer Dieter Hinterkopf when she travels from  Oregon to Düsseldorf to study art in 1971. The Hinterkopf Geburtstagskuchen is Dieter’s family‘s traditional birthday cake. Louise’s mother-in-law, Hannelore, instructs Louise to make the cake for her Dieter, part of the complicated family history that Hannelore shares. The […] Read More

  One of the amazing things about creating the menu for The Lost Family was reconnecting with my own. I knew I wanted the book’s restaurant, Masha’s, to be a fusion of Jewish and German food—Peter and his first wife Masha’s culinary heritages, respectively—and, since we’re introduced to Masha’s in 1965, the menu items  would also […] Read More

In The Kinship of Secrets, kimchi is featured in both Inja’s Korean story and Miran’s American story (the two young sisters at the heart of the novel). In Seoul, Inja’s aunt makes terrible kimchi that worsens as it ferments over the winter. As a way to earn money, Miran’s mother makes gallons of fresh kimchi and […] Read More