Wanderlust

A Book Club Sampler from Simon & Schuster

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Dear Armchair Travelers, Pack your suitcases and cancel your plans! Wanderlust: A Book Club Sampler from Simon & Schuster is your boarding pass to the beautiful, the mysterious, and the unknown. This sampler was created to pay homage to a books unique ability to transport your imagination around the world, taking you on journeys across distance and time. Its one of the reasons why we read. From the lush English countryside, to the dusty deserts of ancient Israel, to the tangled streets of postwar Korea, the titles featured in this sampler do just that. Each excerpt in Wanderlust is accompanied by a collection of bonus materials intended to enrich your reading experience, including discussion questions, suggestions for enhancing your book club meeting, and author interviews. In the spirit of looking to the horizon, we also asked each author featured in this sampler one question: What is your favorite travel memory? Their answers are fittingly diversefrom Christina Meldrums summers spent at a family cottage in Lake Margrethe, Michigan, to Alice Hoffmans inspirational first trip to Masada, the setting of her epic new novel The Dovekeepers. Anuradha Roy, author of An Atlas of Impossible Longing, describes the lure of armchair travel best: All readerscarry within themselves sediments of the places they have traveled to in books, the people theyve met on the way. Therefore the strange dj vu is when you land in a foreign country and wonder if youve been there before. So, sit back, relax, and get ready for the trip of a lifetime. Bon Voyage! The Simon & Schuster Team of (Adventurous) Book Club Enthusiasts ReadingGroups.SimonandSchuster.com P.S. If you and your book club find yourselves in need of even more book club recommendations, download a copy of our debut sampler, Something to Read About, at SomethingtoReadAbout.com.

Wanderlust
A Book Club Sampler from Simon & Schuster
Introduction Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo Wildflower Hill: A Novel, by Kimberley Freeman The Dovekeepers: A Novel, by Alice Hoffman Amaryllis in Blueberry: A Novel, by Christina Meldrum The Hundred-Foot Journey: A Novel, by Richard C. Morais The Distant Hours: A Novel, by Kate Morton This Burns My Heart: A Novel, by Samuel Park An Atlas of Impossible Longing: A Novel, by Anuradha Roy Reading Group Tips and Resources

A Memoir of Food, Love, and War

DAY OF HONEY:

Annia Ciezadlo
Free Press Hardcover: 9781416583936 eBook: 9781416584223 Available in paperback February 2012: 9781416583943

Among the least political, and most intimate and valuable [books], to have come out of the Iraq war.Holding Day of Honey, I was reminded of the way that, with a book of poems, you can very often flip through it for five minutes and know if youre going to like it; you get something akin to a contact high . . . readers will feel lucky to find her.
Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo

Authors Note
Dear Reader, I dont know where most writers do their deep thinking, but for me its always been the kitchen. Sometimes I cook and even eat an entire meal just for an excuse to wash the dishes. Theres something about standing there with my hands covered with soap, scraping and sudsing and lathering and rinsing, then doing it all over again, that frees up thoughts to come and go as they please. Six years ago, I was washing dishes at my tiny kitchen sink in Beirut, where I lived at the time, and thinking of nothing in particular. The counter was piled with zaatar akhdar, wild Syrian oregano from the Mediterranean hillsides, and other green things Id picked up: mint, purslane, wild arugula. As a journalist, I covered war and politics, and there was plenty of both in the Middle East in those days. But suddenly it struck me: Why doesnt anybody write about thisthe wild green herbs, the foragers who pick them, the Bedouin woman who boards a minibus at four a.m. in the Bekaa Valley so she can sell them on the sidewalks of Beirut? Or the grandmother who buys the greens, cleans them and chops them, and transforms them into something exquisite for her extended family, making sure to send a plate down to the woman on the sidewalk that she bought them from? Theyre just as important, if not more so, than the politicians or the soldiers or the men of God. One bundle of greens connects you to an entire world of social, economic, and political realities. In Baghdad, covering the war, the stories Id found most fascinating were the dramas of everyday life. How do families in a war zone send their kids to school? Drive to work? Make dinner every night? I found that people took comfort in small, everyday routinesthe kind of domestic rituals we might take for granted, or might even resent, in a country at peace. Like cooking, eating, and doing dishes. We often dont appreciate these things, because we dont consider them serious topics like war and peace. But in fact these everyday rituals are what make up the fabric of our lives, the vast majority of our time every day. And there can be a real beauty to them, especially when youre in a war zone and you realize how fleeting they can be. I decided to write a book about the texture of everyday life in the Middle Eastern cities Id lived in, to show readers the hidden world of families and everyday life that we usually never see. Annia Ciezadlo

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memory. Annia Ciezadlos writes fondly of car trips, public transportation, and the most important place in the world.
I was weaned on travel: my mom hiked across islands carrying me in a backpack, hauled me all the way across the country and back several time in the backseat of her tiny Ford Pinto, and I never complained or got bored. Just looking out the window was a thrill. I dreamed of visiting cities like Paris, London, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Barcelona, Madrid, and later, when I grew up, I did. To this day, even taking the Metra commuter train out of Chicago, or a bus to upstate New York, is enough to send me into that dreamy but somehow hyper alert state that Ive come to think of as my only true home. But theres one place that tops all of them. One original journey that contains all the others. I cant think of any place more exciting or mysterious or fraught with perils and possibilities than my local public library. Its the most important place in the world, the place where all of our journeys begin.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo

Chapter 10 The Flavor of Freedom

If you go into any town, eat of its vegetables and onions, for they drive away the sickness special to that town. The Medicine of the Prophet, Mahmud bin Mohamed al-Chaghhayni

After a few weeks in Baghdad, Mohamad hired a driver named Abu Zeinab, a cheerful giant who drove the tiniest red car in Baghdad. (Abu Zeinab is a kunyah, a nickname derived from the name of the firstbornin this case, father of Zeinab, his four-year-old daughter. In much of the Arab world, parents usually name themselves after firstborn sons, but among Iraqi Shiites it is not uncommon to take the name of a firstborn daughter.) One day Abu Zeinab was driving us along the Tigris when we passed a grove of date palms the size of a football field. Tall, graceful trunks marched off in stately rows. The tops wove together into a green canopy. Grass grew underneath them so Granny Smith green I thought at first it was AstroTurf. Looking out over this oasis from Abu Zeinabs hot little car, wedged in acres of diesel-fumed traffic, I realized it had been months since I had touched grass. And just like that, the homesickness got me. Back in Chicago, my mother wrote me e-mails describing fall in the Midwest: The magnolia tree was shedding its leaves. The crab apples glowed like bright red cherries. The deer invaded the backyard every evening and looked up, startled, when they heard the screen door slam. The air smelled like wood smoke and cinnamon. Homesickness was exactly thata sickness. A misalignment of the limbs. A chemical imbalance in the blood. Body and soul out of balance from trying to straddle two different places at once. My skin remembered the precise level of moisture in the air; it rebelled against the heat, the dust. My feet recalled the exact surface tension of New York City pavement, northern Illinois soil, hardwood floors. My eyes needed green. If you couldnt bring the body back to the place it remembered, you did the next best thing: you brought a bit of the place to where the body was. You could fool your metabolism, at least temporarily, with music. You could numb it with drink. But the best way to trick homesickness, as every traveler knows, is with food. After that first, disastrous meal at the Hamra, I asked every Iraqi I met about food. Even then, people were growing tired of politics. But everyone loves to talk about food. And food was one of the few things I could talk about in Arabic. In the beginning, I simply wandered around Baghdad, speaking to people in the little Levantine dialect I knew. Pickles in Beirut are kabees, pressed. In Baghdad theyre mkhallal, the vinegared, or turshi, a Farsi word for pickle. In Lebanon zucchini was kusa or courgette; in Iraq, it was shajar, which in Lebanon meant tree. But even when I knew the words, I couldnt understand the guttural Iraqi accent. Their words were heavier; they clanked with consonants the Lebanese would simply swallow or spit

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo out. If Iraqis didnt understand me, it might be because Id gotten a word wrong; it might also be that I was using a Levantine word theyd never heard before. The times I actually communicated seemed like small miracles, and I would whisper the words to myself like a blissful incantation: Dajaj: chicken. Mai: water. Rumman: pomegranate. Masquf: masquf. I started asking everyone to recommend a favorite dish. Everybody said the same thing: masquf. You have to try masquf. The best place for masquf used to be on Abu Nuwas, along the Tigris . . . Here they would sigh, and a montage of expressionspleasure, pride, and regret would pass across their faces. Nowadays, they would resume, the best place to get masquf is a restaurant in Karada, next to the leather factory. Here, Ill write it down for you . . . The search for food led me to the places where Baghdad was at its best. Karada was my favorite neighborhood, especially the long and bustling market street of Inner Karada. American magazines described Iraqi women as cowering in their homes, kidnapped and raped if they set foot outdoors. The streets of Baghdad, according to these accounts, were empty of the fairer sex. But Karada swarmed with women: working-class Iraqi women didnt have servants to do their shopping. They had to work, get groceries, and pick up their kids. They wore short-sleeved T-shirts, long black abayas, and everything in between. The women wearing abayas billowed along the sidewalks like black jellyfish. Every so often, a hand shot out to snare small children, point out tomatoes, or clutch the surging black cloth underneath a rounded chin. At Mahar masquf shop, the man led me to a bathtub where fat gray carp circled sluggishly. He asked me to choose my victim. I pointed to the liveliest one. The cook reached in and grabbed the fish, laid it on a worn wooden plank, and smashed its head with a mallet. The fish lay stunned, but not quite deadI had chosen that one, after all, for its fierce attachment to life. Starting at the back of the fishs head, he slit it down the spine with a knife, then grabbed each side of the incision and turned the fish inside out. The two halves of its own face gazed inward at each other in a macabre kiss. Pressing it open with quick, strong hands, he flattened the fish, now thoroughly deconstructed, into a large round O. He folded it between the metal jaws of a hinged barbecue rack (later, I visited more traditional places that propped their fish up on little wooden sticks). He splayed it out over a large open vat of smoldering wood. Come back in one hour, he told me, and your masquf will be ready to eat. * * * There was a phrase Iraqis were always using: the flavor of freedom. For a lot of Baghdadis, that flavor was masquf. It was more than just a fish, or a way of preparing it; the ritual of masquf embodied a vanished place and time and way of life. Masquf can be made anywherethey make it in Basra, or even, these days, in Beirut. But it is meant to be savored in the open-air restaurants on Abu Nuwas, the corniche along the Tigris where Iraqis used to stroll at sunset.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo Traditionally, the best masquf was made from barbel, a carp-like fish that Iraqis have been eating since the ancient Mesopotamian days. But masquf s flavor also came from the hour of anticipation while you waited for your fish. During that hour, people would eat, drink, gamble, and talk. Girls and boys would stroll up and down the corniche laughing and making eyes at one another. Mothers and fathers would rent boats and float up and down the moonlit river, drinking in the sound of music and laughter over water, the flickering fires, the smell of roasting fish from the riverbank. The important thing on Abu Nuwas was drinking arak, explained Salaam, the young communist I had met at Maggys journalism class, who had become a good friend, and eating meze like jajik while you waited for your fish to be done. Abu Nuwas had its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, when the city rented out small plots along the riverfront every summer. Families would take them for the season and set up temporary wooden ramadas with roofs woven out of river reeds. On hot summer nights, everybody would head for the riverfront to talk, play the oud, take boat rides, and eat masquf. Some people said masquf was imported by the Ottomans. Others maintained it was a Babylonian tradition, thousands of years old. Muslims claimed it was a Christian dish (the Christian taste for fish being well known). Christians whispered that it was a specialty from the old Jewish quarter along the river (the Jewish affinity for fish being well known). Some believed it had come from the Mandeans (the Mandean love for the river and its waters being well known). I found this frustrating. I wanted facts, dates, scholarly references, not a vague mash of exoticized nostalgia. Everybody talked about masquf, but nobody knew where it came from. Etymology was no help: as with many Arabic dishes, its name describes the form of the dish more than its contents. Masquf means the ceilinged, from saqf, ceilinga poets description of the fish spread out over the fire like the roof of a little open ramada. Ancient Sumerian tablets mention fish touched by fire, an ambiguous phrase. Herodotus wrote that three Babylonian tribes lived on fish alone, but according to his detailed description, they dried their catch in the sun, pounded it in mortars, and made it into cakes or a kind of bread. (An Iraqi from the marshland tribes told me they still make fish this way.) Pedro Teixeira, a Portuguese merchant-adventurer who traveled through Baghdad in 1604, noted that Fish are plentiful and good, and the Moors use them. But the usually thorough Teixeira does not say how the Moors used the fish. And so it was with all the sources I could find: the more I read, the more people I asked, the more masquf and its origins receded into mystery. In Iraq, as everywhere, food was an instant geographic indicator. There was the famous black pickle of Najaf, made with date syrup; the tiny, delicate okra of Hillah; the tender and juicy kebabs of Fallujah. There was a kind of oven-roasted lamb that is a specialty not just of Basra but of one particular family in Basra. This culinary GPS system often overlapped with sect. I can enter an Iraqi house, and from the food I can tell if they are Sunni or Shiite, an Iraqi man once boasted to me. Im not saying that Sunnis dont make Shiite dishes, or vice versa. But you do have certain foods that are associated with certain places. Masquf was one such dish. It might be made in other cities, but its soul was still in Baghdad. It got its flavor from the Tigris, even when the fish never touched its waters, and from Abu Nuwas Street.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo Abu Nuwas Street was named after an eighth-century poet. He was a companion of the Caliph al-Amin, son of Haroun al-Rashid, the storied caliph of the Arabian Nights. Nicknamed the Father of Locks for his luxuriant hair, Abu Nuwas was a bisexual bon vivant famous for his khamriyaat, wine songs hymns in praise of wine and the nights he spent drinking it with beautiful girls and boys. He was the patron poet of bars and drinking and unrepentant freedom. Accumulate as many sins as you can, he wrote once, because when Judgment Day arrives, and you see how forgiving and gracious God is, youll gnaw your fingers with regret at all the fun you didnt have. [So] drink the wine, though forbidden / For God forgives even grave sins. The nomadic bards of pre-Islamic Arabia padded their poems with grandiose invocations like the famous qifa nabki, halt, and let us weep. They wept over the abandoned campsite, the spot in the desert where the caravan of their lovers had once stopped, and the romance of endless travel. The formula persisted long after poetry moved to the cities; in medieval Baghdad, citified poets who wouldnt know a camel if it bit them in the behind were still invoking the cold campfire, the traces in the sand, the lost ladylove. Abu Nuwas mastered the old nomadic form first. And then he updated it with a parody more suited to modern urban life: This loser stopped to talk to an abandoned campsite, he wrote (the paraphrase is mine), while I paused to ask what happened to the neighborhood bar. In the 1960s and 70s, a generation of Iraqi intellectuals discovered a world of ideas, debate, and friendship on Abu Nuwas Street. The Iraqi journalist and memoirist Zuhair al-Jezairy described how Baghdads relationship to the river changed as the street and its restaurants had evolved: The river became a kind of lung by which the city breatheda boon for the eye and the spirit. Faleh Jabar grew up in Baghdad during the golden age of Abu Nuwas Street. Today he is a well-known sociologist and author. But back then he was a penniless young student, eking out a living with occasional writing and translation work, producing horrible sentences out of his precious Websters Collegiate dictionary. Every evening, Jabar and his circle of friends would gather at Abu Nuwas and spend long summer nights drinking, talking, exchanging books and arguments and ideas. One night, a friend of Jabars brought his wife to the caf. Some of the masquf restaurants had introduced family sections, where families could eat together. But for young men and women who werent blood relatives to mingle at cafs and barsto sit and drink together in places where alcohol was servedwas still shocking. Nobody had seen anything like it. The place was in an uproar. The owner came to their table. We dont have a private section for families, he said, meaning no women allowed. Its none of your business, replied the lady, her green eyes flashing. Im drinking tea. Is there anything in the Quran, in the shariah, or in the law, that forbids drinking tea in a caf with my husband? With my cousins, with all my brothers? Such a thing could happen only on Abu Nuwas, Jabar told melowering his voice and looking back over his shoulder as if, thirty years later, the caf owner might still hear him.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo After the Prophet Muhammads death in 632, the leadership of Islam passed to a succession of caliphs. The caliph was the commander of the faithful, the political and military leader of the worldwide community of Muslims, and the city where he lived was the caliphatethe capital of the Muslim world. In 762, the Caliph al-Mansur moved the caliphate from Syria to Iraq. He built the round city of Baghdad in a small but strategic site on the banks of the Tigris. He christened his new capital Medinat al-Salam, the City of Peace, and immediately set about constructing an enormous palace. Then as now, Baghdad was a city of souqs. Every profession had its market: the silversmiths, the booksellers, the perfumers. And right in the middle of the bustling marketplace, surrounded by soap makers, butchers, and cooks, stood the caliphs new palace. Just as the palace was finished, an ambassador from the Byzantine Empire came to visit. Scribes and scholars tell different versions of what happened nextkan ya ma kan, as the storytellers say; literally, it was and it was not, or once upon a time. But heres more or less what took place: How do you like my city? the caliph asked his Byzantine visitor, expecting lavish praise. Indeed, you have built a palace like no one before you, said the ambassador. Yet it has one flaw: the markets. Because they are open to all, your enemy can enter, and the merchants can pass on information about you. The leader who lives close to his subjects can have no secrets. The caliph frowned, went stiff, and considered flying into a rage. I have no secrets from my subjects, he said coldly. But as soon as the Byzantine ambassador left, the caliph ordered his servants to bring a wide garment. He unfurled it across the table and drafted a new plan for the city on its fabric. He banished all markets from the city center, leaving only a few baqqals, greengrocers whom he barred from selling anything but vinegar and greens. He moved the markets across the river, putting each merchant in a specific place, with the butchers at the very end because their knives are sharp and their wits are dull. With a stroke of his pen, he rewrote the city. Saddam Hussein fancied himself among the great caliphs. He too built a palace along the Tigris; he too rearranged the city. In 1968, after its second coup, the Baath Party had banned the renting of small plots along the river. In the mid-1980s, Saddam began his assault upon Abu Nuwas Street and its culture of cosmopolitan freedom. He diverted water from the river to feed his palaces fountains and swimming pools. He fenced off its banks with barbed wire. He posted guards along Abu Nuwas who watched pedestrians with hard eyes. He tore down blocks of old Baghdadi houses, with their graceful cantilevered balconies, and replaced them with a row of identical brown brick townhouses. Ugly as they were, these brownish barracks were prime real estate, rewards for loyal party henchmen; Saddam filled them with his Republican Guards, and with that, wrote Jezairy, the river became their prize. The street of the drunken bisexual poet, of masquf and beer and summer nights, turned into a district of drugs and prostitutes and wild dogs. Some restaurants still sold masquf along the river. But with the eyes and ears of the regime all around, it had a different flavor. During sanctions, the sewage pouring into the Tigris made it too polluted for fishing, and the masquf trade shifted to Karada. Now the fish were farmed in giant hatcheries, trucked into

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo the city, and sold out of bathtubs on Karadas sidewalks or at restaurants like White Palace. The fishermen who had once made their living catching shabout and bunni from the Tigris went elsewhere or died out. In June of 2003, Jabar returned to Baghdad for the first time in almost twenty-five years. He headed straight for Abu Nuwas. Near the Jumhuriyah Bridge, he looked down at the Tigris; once a silver ribbon, it had become a poisonous chemical green. A metal fence blocked off the water from anyone foolish enough to approach. Whorls of concertina wire grew along the riverbank like a mutant metallic weed. Qifa Nabkihalt, and let us weep. But then, looking closer, Jabar saw a gap in the fence. Somebody had cut a ragged hole with wire clippers. A toothless, wrinkled face peered up at him from the riverbank: an ancient fisherman, a remnant of the old Abu Nuwas. Whats this fence, who put up the fence? Jabar asked him. Its been there for twenty years, said the old man. And who cut this hole? We did it, he said, triumphant. We took back our river for the first time in twenty years. The old fisherman told Jabar he would wake at dawn every day, go to the fish market in Karada to buy bunni, and bring them all the way to the river, where he would put them in a pool to keep them alivejust to grill masquf by the side of a river too polluted to fish from. Economically, it made no sense: the money the old man spent on gas was probably more than the little he made from the handful of fish that he sold. But that wasnt the point; the point was to be there by the river, making masquf. He couldnt leave that place, said Jabar. The river was his home. Back at Mahar, in Inner Karada, my masquf was finally ready. Each part of its surface had been licked by radiant heat until it was roasted golden brown and fragrant, like a giant, edible fishy halo. They had wrapped it in tanoor bread and packed it with a plate of chopped onions and tomatoes and parsley. The flavor of masquf comes from the wood over which the fish is grilled. Applewood is prized, but other fruit treespomegranate, orange, and apricotare good too. The surface that faced the flames directly had a leathery outer layer that was charred in a few spots. But underneath that was tender white flesh with a delicate wood smoke flavor. I have never eaten trout right after it has been smoked, but I imagine it might taste something like masquf. Using scraps of tanoor bread, I pulled off pieces of the white flesh. I folded them into tiny sandwiches, alternating smoky mouthfuls of fish with an acidic burst of tomato and onions and parsley. At the time, Mahar served only takeout, so Id intended to take my masquf somewhere and eat it sitting at a table. But I was so hungry by the time I got it, and its firewood flavor was so irresistible, that I devoured the entire fish in the car with Abu Zeinab in the middle of a Karada traffic jam.

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Determined to make a life and a career in the Middle East with her new Lebanese husband, Annia spent the next six years in Beirut and Baghdad, cooking and eating with Shiites and Sunnis, refugees and warlords, matriarchs and mullahs. It is from these meals that Annia discovers what she calls a shadow wara hidden conflict that slowly destroys lives, divides families, and poisons daily life. In war zones, the precious ordinariness of cooking takes on new meaning. From hurried meals accompanied by gunfire to lavish family feasts, Annia discovers that civilians use food to feed the soul as much as the body in times of war. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Day of Honey opens with an introduction, titled The Siege, that takes place soon after 9/11 in New York City. Why do you think Annia begins her memoir here, with a taxi ride down Brooklyns Atlantic Avenue? How does this introduction set the scene for the rest of the book? 2. One important theme of Day of Honey is the question of home. Do you agree with Annia that home could be something you made instead of the place where you lived? Is home a fixed location, or is it a movable feast? 3. Discuss the relationship between Annias nomadic teenage years and her personal connection to food. Do you think Annias travels through America influenced her experience in the Middle East? 4. How do you like Beirut? Its the question everyone asks Annia during her first visit to her future home. What are Annias first impressions of Beirut? Which of the citys pleasures does she discover right away, and which does she find later, as a resident? 5. Annia identifies what she refers to as a shadow conflict in times of war that she defines as the slow but relentless destruction of everyday civilian life. Of all the everyday freedoms that are lost in Baghdad and Beirut, which loss seems the most tragic? Which of Annias new friends and acquaintances fall victim to this shadow war, and which manage to adapt during times of conflict? 6. Compare Annias childhood to Mohamads. How were their early environments different, and how were they similar? What challenges did each of them face growing up? What factors made each of them a reluctant nomad?

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo 7. Annia writes: You are reading my account of one warmy imperfect memories of what I saw and felt and did. Others had their own perceptions and their own realities. What does she mean by this? Is she writing as a journalist, or a human being, or both? 8. When Annia arrives in Baghdad, she finds that most outsiders describe Iraqi food as the real weapon of mass destruction. Why does Annia take this as a personal challenge, and how does she prove them wrong? Why have outsiders misjudged Iraqi cuisine? 9. Discuss the theme of hospitality in Day of Honey. How does Annia react to this Middle Eastern tradition? Annia learns early on to never, ever turn down a meal. What kinds of homes, meals, and dangers does Annia encounter as a result? 10. Consider the story of Roaa, Annias translator who grew up in war-torn Iraq. How does Roaa feel about her countrys history and its prospects for the future? Do you think Roaa and her husband, now living in Colorado, will ever be able to make themselves settle down, as Roaa puts it? Why or why not? 11. According to Annia, My idea of paradise is more like Mutanabbi Street, in Baghdads old city: an entire city street with no cars, just books and cafs. How does Mutanabbi Street demonstrate Iraqis love for the written word? What solace does Annia find on Mutanabbi Street, and why must she eventually stop going there? Have you ever encountered a city, street, or place that felt like your idea of paradise? 12. Annia was living in Baghdad when Saddam Hussein was finally captured. How do Annias Iraqi friends respond to this historical event? Annia writes, The flavor of freedom was more complex, more bitter than we imagined. Did Annias account of the United States occupation of Iraq change your perspective or understanding of current events? 13. Discuss the unique challenges that womenthe face of Iraqmust contend with. Why is Dr. Salama, a popular female politician, a complicated spokeswoman for womens rights in Iraq? What does Annia learn about Iraqi women and politics from her conversations with Dr. Salama? How did you react to these events in the book? 14. Consider the strong personality of Umm Hassane, Annias mother-in-law. What are Annias first impressions of Umm Hassane, and how does Annias opinion of her mother- in-law evolve over the course of the book? What can we learn about Umm Hassanes character from her cooking style? How does Annia find the real story of the war by cooking with Umm Hassane? Does Umm Hassane remind you of anyone you know? 15. Discuss the early years of Annia and Mohamads marriage. What are the main sources of tension in their relationship? Were you able to relate to their everyday squabbles? Why or why not? Why do you think she includes these incidents in her accounts of historic events?

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo 16. Why does Annia return to Beirut in the fall of 2007, after Mohamad finds a job in New York? What do you think Mohamad means when he says, the war would never end . . . you ended it yourself (p. 313)? How does Annia manage to end her dangerous attachment to Beirut? ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB 1. Move your book club to the kitchen and try out one of Annias delicious recipes! Decide in advance which dish to try, and ask each member of your book club to bring ingredients. When its time to eat, wish everyone Sahtain! 2. Annia imagines an edible map of Beirut, with all her favorite shops and restaurants marked (p. 178). Make an edible map of where you live by marking your top food spots on a map of your town. Compare your edible map with other members maps from your book club. 3. Annia states that every city has its own questionBeiruts is How do you like Beirut? while New York Citys is What do you do? Discuss this idea with your group and decide on a question that embodies your own city or countryside. 4. Donate to a charity that helps citizens in Iraq. For a list of effective organizations working in Iraq, visit the website of the American Institute of Philanthropy: http://www.charitywatch.org/hottopics/iraqaid.html. You can also volunteer to help Iraqi refugees in America by contacting the International Rescue Committee. 5. To read more by Annia Ciezadlo, including many of the articles she wrote in Baghdad and Beirut, visit her website at http://www.anniaciezadlo.com. A CONVERSATION WITH ANNIA CIEZADLO Please tell us how you chose the title for your book. What does the Arabic proverb day of honey, day of onions mean to you? Where did you first learn or hear of this saying? Its from an old Arabic saying that goes youm aasl, youm baslday of honey, day of onions. I dont remember exactly where I first heard it, but Ive seen people use it in a multitude of ways: sometimes to comfort each other, at other times ironically. Its hopeful and cynical at the same time. One day might be sweet, the next bitter, but you keep going. You taste the honey while you can. For me, it sums up a wise, beleaguered optimism that the Palestinian writer Emile Habiby called pessoptimism: that no matter how bad things get, you dont lose your faith in human nature. Or your deep conviction that something disastrous is just about to happen. When did you start writing Day of Honey? How did you decide to focus your book on the

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo struggles of everyday life in Beirut and Baghdad? It was July of 2005. I was standing at the sinkthe tiny little sink I wrote about in the book washing dishes and thinking about how different Lebanon was from how Id pictured it. Our tiny kitchen was stuffed with zaatar and wild arugula that Id bought from Umm Adnan, the woman who sold wild greens on the sidewalk in our neighborhood, and gorgeous little intense tomatoes, and it suddenly struck me: What if Americans could see this side of life in Lebanon, not to mention the entire Middle East? The side of Lebanon thats ridiculously generous, down- to-earth, and lushthe side we so rarely see depicted, because were focusing on militants and conflict. I had been writing mostly political analysis out of Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, because thats what most editors wanted. But readers are always interested in the little details that make up the fabric of everyday life: What do people look like? What do they eat? What do they talk about over the dinner table? What are their hopes, fears, and dreams? I realized that if I wrote about these things it would translate the abstraction of Middle Eastern politics into something that people would be able to relate to. So the idea for the book literally came from the kitchen sink. When did you first realize that you had a personal story to tell? I kept a diary the whole time I was in the Middle East (some days more faithfully than others). But I was always more interested in other peoples stories than my ownwhich is probably why I became a journalist. With Day of Honey, I realized that I had to tell my own story in order to write about the people whose lives I shared in Beirut and Baghdad. As an American woman married to a Lebanese man, I had access to a world of families and domestic life that most foreigners never get to see. Food was a window into that world: the dinner table was where I would learn new words, hear new opinions, where people would open up. Writing about meals was a way of letting readers get a glimpse of this unseen world, which I had the unique privilege of being able to see as both an insider and an outsider at the same time. Telling my own story was a way to introduce other peoples stories and points of view in a way that was more natural, and more honest, than pretending to be a fly on the wall. Although most of your memoir takes place in the Middle East, many of the problems you face will sound familiar to American readers, from apartment hunts to in-laws. How much of Day of Honey do you think your readers will be able to relate to? A lot, I think. America is going through a wave of foreclosures right now that is unlike anything weve seen since the Great Depression. Theres a big difference between losing your home in a war and losing it in a financial collapse, but there are some similarities too. You have to move, perhaps to a strange city, and readjust. You or your children have to start new schools, make new friends, and go through the homesickness of that lonely adjustment period. So I think that aspect of the book is something a lot of Americans will be able to relate to right now. During my teenaged years, when I was moving around a lot, I would go to the public library and stock up on books about the American Civil War, or ancient Greece, or World War II, or even novels like The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Reading about people living through times of upheaval made me

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo feel less aloneless singled out by hard times or disaster, and more in awe of people who had much bigger problems than mine. So if readers have a similar reaction to Day of Honey, that would make me very happy. Day of Honey includes so many voices in addition to your own. Which of your relatives and friends in the Middle East will be getting a copy of the book? Has anybody objected to the way you portrayed him or her? Everyone will get a copy, but not all of them can read it. Umm Hassane doesnt speak any English, so well have to translate or paraphrase it for her. But I think shell like seeing the beautiful cover photo (which was taken by my friend Barbara Massaad, the fabulous Lebanese cookbook writer). After the manuscript was finished, but before it came out, I showed it to some of my friends from Beirut and Baghdad. They loved it, but it was hard for them to read. It brought back memories of wars they had lived through. A couple of them called me in tears while they were reading it. It was a good reminder for me that words have a great deal of power, and you have to be mindful of their impact on other people. Besides the rich data of your personal experience, what kind of research did you conduct before writing Day of Honey? Way too much! This is probably thanks to my background as a journalist, where its normal to do about ten times more research and reporting than what you actually end up putting in your article. If Ive learned anything from living through these historic events in the Middle East, its that you have to know the history in order to understand the latest headlines coming out of there. Thats part of the reason I put so much history in Day of Honey. So in addition to the hundreds of people I interviewed in my years in the Middle East, I also spent three years researching food and Middle Eastern history. I read books about the topography of medieval Baghdad, classical Arabic food poetry, and ancient Mesopotamian beer. I went on a history bender. I read a history of salt (by the magnificently obsessive Mark Kurlansky) and a history of sugar (Sidney Mintzs brilliant Sweetness and Power). A lot of these books are included in the bibliography; if you want to geek out on Middle Eastern food and history, its a good place to start. What surprised you most about Beirut and Baghdad? How did your view of the Middle East change after living there for over six years? We get most of our images of the Middle East from wars. A bomb goes off, the television crews go film it, and we see people jumping up and down and shouting and waving their fists. No wonder we think they hate us. But most of the ordinary people I met, with a few exceptions, didnt hate Americans. Quite the reversethey would often ask me, with genuine puzzlement, why we hated them. It was such a perfect reversal of the stereotype that sometimes I almost had to laugh. Many people in the Middle East are deeply angry about U.S. foreign policy. But almost everyone I met in Baghdad, Damascus, or Beirutwith a few notable exceptionsmade the crucial distinction between our countrys government and its people. Thats a distinction we

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo dont always make with them. But I think we should. And thats why I focused on the ordinary people whose voices are often drowned out by militants or demagogues. Did you have culture shock on moving to the Middle East? Baghdad was a fascinating place because it was frozen in timeunder Saddam Hussein, it was cut off from the rest of the world for decades. After the American invasion, it was opened up to the rest of the world, and in a sense everyone in Iraq had culture shock. Beirut is different. Its wordly, sophisticated, and yet traditional at the same time. In Beirut, my friends would always warn me not to be taken in by the citys cosmopolitanism. For example, I would often be surprised to hear young people with college degrees, who were intelligent and well-traveled, and otherwise liberal, speak against interfaith marriage. And I heard this from both Christians and Muslims. One of the hardest things was reminding myself that even though people might look familiar, sound familiar, and eat grape leaves that taste like my grandmothers, they had completely different histories and associations than mine. People all over the world want the same things: to grow up, get an education, get married and have kids and give them a good life. But they want them in different ways. I might not agree with a Muslim woman who wants Islamic law, or a Christian man whos opposed to interfaith marriage. But I think its important to understand why they might want these things, and that it doesnt necessarily make them bad people. What was it like being an American woman in the Middle East? People ask me that a lot. Id like to say that I struggled terribly, but the truth is that, for a reporter, being female was actually a tremendous competitive advantage. People find you less threatening. Theyre quicker to let their guard down and reveal what they really think. Theyre more likely to invite you into their homes and introduce you to their families. Being female gives you incredible access to that unseen world of private life that most Americans never glimpse. When was the last time you read a substantial article about Iraqi womens political rights? Or a long magazine profile about someone like Dr. Salama al-Khafajitrust me, the Middle East is full of women as remarkable as her. I see them as the real story, and I think a lot of Americans want to read that untold story. Which is why I wrote this book. Its clear in the memoir that your Greek- and Polish-American heritage influenced both your point of view and your palate. Have you considered writing more about the experiences and recipes of your life before the Middle East? Yes, absolutely. I never started out thinking I want to go cover wars in the Middle East. I began my career as a journalist writing for a tiny community-based newspaper in upstate New York. We covered everything from housing scandals and local government to parking tickets. I went to journalism school because I wanted to keep doing that kind of reportingabout city politics, and small-time corruption, and the daily struggles of ordinary people against the forces of bureaucracy and greed. These are stories you can find anywhere, all over the world,

Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, by Annia Ciezadlo including here in the USA. I could write a whole book just about my grandparents, never mind the extraordinary people Ive met over the years. Ill keep writing these kinds of stories as long as people want to read them. How do you describe your varied writing careerdo you identify yourself as a memoirist, a journalist, a food writer, a war correspondent, or something else? All of the above. In the mouth-watering recipes you provide at the end of your book, you encourage the reader to invent her own. How much have you strayed from tradition in these Middle Eastern recipes? What do you find rewarding about inventing your own versions? I like to improvise. When Im cooking for myself, Ill try anything. But Ive changed the recipes in Day of Honey only very slightly from the originalsenough to make them a little more familiar, and to suggest variations. For example, Umm Hassane doesnt put carrot and celery in her chicken stock, only onions. And people in Lebanon, with some exceptions, dont use nearly as much spice or hot pepper as were accustomed to in the United States. But I kept alterations to a minimumfar, far less than I would normally do at homebecause I wanted readers to taste the flavors that I write about in the book. But while these are mostly Umm Hassanes traditional recipes, I think its important to note that no tradition is set in stone. There is no one Lebanese version of mjadara: Umm Hassanes mjadara is different from Aunt Khadijas, which is different from Batouls, and thats just the variation within one family. People from two different parts of Lebanon will disagree passionately over the true, correct, and traditional way to make kibbeh nayehand each may say the other is wrong, but in fact theyre both correct. I was sitting at a table once with some friends in Beirut, and I asked them what their definition of mjadara was. There were five of us at the table, and each one of us had a completely different version. It was a perfect illustration of the old saying about four Lebanese having five opinionsequally true with politics or food. You chronicle all sorts of flavors in Day of Honey, from delectable meze to celebratory pudding. Of the recipes you provide to readers, which do you make most often? Fattoush. I make it all the time. I change it according to whats in season, whats in my pantry, and how I feel that day. In the spring I might throw in shaved fennel or red bell peppers. In the winter I make it with pomegranate seeds instead of tomatoes. Or maybe avocado. Just dont tell Umm Hassane!

WILDFLOWER HILL
Kimberley Freeman
Touchstone Paperback: 9781451623499 eBook: 9781451623512

Emma, a prima ballerina in London, is at a crossroads after an injured knee ruins her career. Forced to rest and take stock of her life, she finds that shes mistaken fame and achievement for love and fulfillment. Returning home to Australia, she learns of her Grandmother Beatties death and a strange inheritance: a sheep station in isolated rural Australia. Wildflower Hill is a compelling, atmospheric, and romantic novel about discovering that the answer might be not at all what youd expect.

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman

Authors Note
A few years ago, I found a photograph of my grandmother taken in the 1920s. I only ever knew Grandma as a dear little old lady with white hair, but in this photograph she was sitting on the grass, her knees up under her chin, looking over her shoulder. She had a glossy black chin-length bob and a smile that can only be described as knowing and flirtatious. It was a lovely surprise to see her this way: as a young, vibrant woman. It got me thinking about what else I didnt know about Grandma. I started to explore this idea in Wildflower Hill: a story about a young woman (Emma) who gets to know her grandmother (Beattie) through an inherited house and finds out about Beatties rebellious past and a secret she kept til she died. While I dont think my grandmother ever did anything so wild as Beattie, it makes me warm inside to imagine that she got up to some mischief in her youth, when she had a smile that could melt hearts. Kimberley Freeman

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memories. Kimberley Freeman recounts a family trip to foggy Tasmania.
To research Wildflower Hill, I travelled to Tasmania, which is an island off the bottom of Australia. It is one of my favorite places to go, especially with young children. The landscape is varied and very wild, from old growth rainforests to stunning white beaches to rolling green farmland to starkly dramatic mountains. I had booked a trip for my family and me in April of 2009 to see a few farmland locations and gather some inspiration for the story. Unfortunately, the day before we were due to leave my two-year-old daughter developed a sudden and violent stomach bug. She was in no fit state to travel, and neither was I with around-the-clock nappy and bed changes. We postponed the trip until July and found ourselves in Tasmania in the middle of winter. I live in Brisbane, which is warm and sunny all year around. To say that my family and I were unprepared for midwinter on an island in the Southern Ocean was an understatement. We spent a great deal of time inside, very close to the heaters, and a little bit of time outside, rugged up in multiple layers, shivering. Every time we went out, one of my children lost something: a glove, a scarf, a sock, you name it. We left pieces of winter clothing all over the farm. On one of the days, the fog was so thick that it was like waking up inside a cloud. It didnt lift all day, so we stayed inside and the children ran their toy cars over every inch of the house and watched the same Dora DVD over and over. On another day, when the fog cleared, we drove miles and miles of unsealed road to a nineteenth- century farmhouse called Fonthill with an old English garden full of climbing roses and lavender. One other time, the owners of the farm gave us a demonstration of how their incredible sheep dogs round up sheep, who went thundering past and around us so hard that the ground shook. All of these images made their way into the story. So it wasnt only a wonderful time with my little people, it was a fully tax- deductible business trip!

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman

ONE Beattie: Glasgow, 1929

Beattie Blaxland had dreams. Big dreams. Not the confused patchwork dreams that invade sleep. No, these were the dreams with which she comforted herself before sleep, in her trundle bed rolled out on the floor of her parents finger-chilling tenement flat. Vivid, yearning dreams. A life of fashion and fabrics; and fortune, of course. A life where the dismal truth about her dismal family would fade and shrink and disappear. One thing she had never dreamed was that she would find herself pregnant to her married lover just before her nineteenth birthday. All through February, she obsessively counted the weeks and counted them again, bending her mind backward, trying to make sense of the dates. Her stomach flipped at the smell of food, her breasts grew tender, and by the first of March, Beattie had finally come to understand that a childHenry MacConnells childwas growing inside her. That night she arrived at the club as though nothing were wrong. Laughed at Teddy Wilders jokes, leaned in to the warm pressure of Henrys hand in the small of her back, all the while fighting the urge to retch from the smell of cigar smoke. Her first sip of the gin cocktail was harsh and sour on her tongue. Still, she kept smiling. She was well used to navigating that gulf between how she felt and how she behaved. Teddy clapped his hands firmly twice, and the smoke rose and moved with the men and their brandy snifters to the round card table that dominated the room. Teddy and his brother, Billy, ran this not quite legal gambling room above their fathers perfectly legal restaurant on Dalhousie Lane. It was at the restaurant that Beattie had first met them. Shed been working as a waitress; thats what her parents still believed she did. Teddy and Billy introduced her to Henry, and soon after, theyd introduced her to the club, too: to the darkly glittering underbelly of Glasgow, where nobody cared who she was so long as she looked pretty. She worked half the night serving drinks and half the night keeping Teddys girl, Cora, company. Cora patted the chaise to invite Beattie to sit down. The other women gathered near the fireplace; Cora, her short curls flattened over her ears with a pink satin headband, was the acknowledged queen of the room. Though none of the others liked the idea, they were careful enough not to stand too close for fear of unfair comparisons. Beattie probably would have done the same if Cora hadnt decided that they should be bosom friends. Cora grabbed Beatties hand in her own and squeezed it: her usual greeting. Beattie was both in sacred awe of Cora and excruciatingly jealous of her heavily made-up dark eyes and her platinum hair, her easy charm and her endless budget for tasseled dresses in muslin or crepe de chine. Beattie tried, she really tried, to keep up. She bought her own fabric and sewed her own clothes, and nobody could tell they werent designed and made in Paris. She wore her dark hair fashionably short but felt that her open face and large blue eyes ruined any chance of her seeming mysterious and alluring. Of course, Cora was born to her confident glamour; Beattie would always struggle for it. Cora blew a long stream of cigarette smoke into the air and then said, So, how far along are you?

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman Beatties heart spiked, and she looked at Cora sharply. Her friend looked straight ahead, her red lips closed around the end of her cigarette holder. For a moment Beattie even believed that shed imagined the question: surely her shameful secret couldnt make its way from the dark inside to the brightly lit club. But then Cora turned, fine curved eyebrows raised above her sloe eyes, and smiled. Beattie, youre practically green from the smoke, and youve not touched your wine. Last week I thought you might be sick, but this week . . . Im right, arent I? Henry doesnt know. The words tripped out, desperate. Cora softened, patting her hand. Nor a chance of me saying a word. I promise. Catch your breath, dearie. You look terrified. Beattie did as Cora said, forcing her limbs to relax into the languid softness expected of her. She accepted a cigarette from Cora, even though it made her stomach clench. She couldnt have another soul noticing or asking questions. Billy Wilder, for example, with his florid cheeks and cruel laugh: oh, he would find it great sport. She knew, though, that she couldnt hide it forever. You didnt answer my question. How far along? Cora said in a tone so casual she may as well have asked Beattie what shed eaten on her lunch break that day. Ive not had a period in seven or eight weeks, Beattie mumbled. She felt unbearably vulnerable, as though her skin had been peeled off. She didnt want to speak of it or think of it another moment. She was not ready to be a mother: the thought made her heart cold. Still early, then. Cora pulled her powder compact from her bag and flipped it open. Loud laughter rose from the card table. Still a chance it wont stick. For a breath or two, the oppressive dread lifted. Is that right? I know nothing. I know Im a fool, but I . . . Shed believed Henrys promise that if he withdrew from her body at precisely the right moment, this could never happen. Hed refused to take any other measures. French letters are for the French, hed said. I know what Im doing. He was thirty, hed fought in a war; Beattie trusted him. Listen, now, Cora said, her voice dropping low. Therere things you can do, dearie. Have a hot bath every day, take cod liver oil, run about and wear yourself out. She snapped her compact shut, her voice returning to its usual casual tone. Its early days. My cousins friend was three months along when the bairn just bled away. She caught the wee thing in her hands, no bigger than a mouse. She was devastated, though. Longed for a baby. Married, of course. Married. Beattie wasnt married, though Henry was. To Mollythe Irish wolfhound, as he liked to call her. Henry assured Beattie it was a loveless marriage made between two people who thought they knew each other well but had slowly become strangers. Nonetheless, Molly was still his wife. And Beattie was not. She puffed her way inelegantly through half of the cigarette, then excused herself to start work. As she brought round the drinks tray, she considered Henrys square jaw and his red-gold hair, longing to touch him but careful not to break his concentration. She dared not tell him yet about the child: if Cora was right and there was a chance Beattie could miscarry, then why create problems? Nothing may come of it. It might all be over tomorrow or next week. All over. A few long, hot baths; certainly, it was hard to spend too long in the shared bathroom on their floor of the tenement block, but if she went down early enough in the morning . . .

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman Henry glanced up from his cards and saw her looking. He gave her a nod: that was Henry, no grand gestures, no foolish winking or waving. Just his steady gray eyes on hers. She had to look away. He returned his attention to his cards as she returned her tray to the little bar in the corner of the room and lined up the bottles of gin and brandy along the mirrored shelves. She loved Henrys pale eyes; strangely pale. She could understand him through them when he didnt speak, and he spoke rarely. Once, right at the start of their relationship, shed been watching him play poker and noticed how stark the contrast was of his pupils against his irises. In fact, she could read his hand in his eyes: if he picked up a good card, his pupils would grow, while a bad card made them shrink. Almost imperceptibly, noticeable only by the woman who gazed at those eyes endlessly. This led her to watch the other men at the table and try to predict their hands. Not always easy, especially with Billy Wilder, whose eyes were practically black. But in instances of high stakes, when the men were trying hardest to keep their faces neutral, she could nearly always tell if they were bluffing. Henry thought it a load of rot. Shed tried to show him what she meant, but hed tipped her off his lap and sent her away from the card table. Hed lost the game for not following her advice and had been in a devil of a mood for days. So now she stayed away. It wasnt so important. Cora signaled for her to return; she had gossip to share. Can you believe what Daisy OHara is wearing? Beattie switched her attention to Daisy, who wore a sequined tube of beaded net over a silk slip, a silk flower at her neck, and a pair of high Louis heels. The shimmering dress was cut too tight for her wide hips: modern fashion was so unforgiving of hips. It wasnt Daisys fault. A good dressmaker could drape those fabrics so she looked divine, tall, a goddess. Lordy, Cora said, she looks like a cow. Its the dress. Cora rolled her eyes. But tonight Beattie hadnt the heart for Coras razor-sharp analysis of every other womans failings. She listened disconsolately for a while, then returned to the bar. The evening wore onclinking glass and mens laughter, loud jazz music on the gramophone and the ever present smokeand she began to feel bone-weary and to long for bed. She could hardly say that, though. Teddy Wilder liked to call her break-of-dawn Beattie; many was the time shed turned up for work at Camilles dress shop after only an hour or two of sleep. Tonight Beattie felt removed from the noise and merriment. In her own little bubble of miserable anxiety. At length, Henry rose from the table and scraped up an untidy pile of five-pound notes. Hed had a good evening, and unlike the others, he knew when to stop. Half-joking recriminations followed him across the room. He stopped in front of the bar, seemingly oblivious to what his friends were saying. Without smiling, he stretched out his hand for Beattie. Henry exuded a taciturn authority that nobody resisted. Beattie loved him for it; other men seemed such noisy fools by contrast. And just one glance at his hand, at his strong wrist and his clean square fingernails, reminded her why she was in this predicament in the first place. Her skin grew warm just looking at him. He pulled her close against his side with his hand down low on her hip, and she knew what he wanted. The little back room waited, with its soft daybed among the stacks of empty

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman crates and barrels. As always, she shivered as she moved out of the warmth of the firelit club, and Henry laughed softly at her, his breath hot in her ear, assuming her shivers were of desire. But in that instant, Beattie felt the full weight of her lack of wisdom, and it crushed her desire to dust. If he sensed her reluctance, he gave no indication. The last sliver of light disappeared as he closed the door and gathered her in his arms. The rough warmth of his clothes, the sound of his breath, the beat of his heart. She fell against him, all her bones softening for love of him. Away from the eyes of his friends, he was so tender. My dear, he said against her hair. You know I love you. I love you, too. She wanted to say it over and over, in bigger, brighter words. He laid her gently on the daybed and started pushing up the hem of her skirt. She stiffened; he pressed himself against her more firmly, and she saw how foolish it was to resist. It was already too late. Why shut the gate after the horse had bolted, as her father would say. Her father. Another wave of shame and guilt. Beattie? Henry said, his voice soft, although his hands were now locked like iron around her knees. Yes, yes, she whispered. Of course. Beatties skin was pink from the heat of the bath as she dressed in the dank bathroom. A week had passed, and the hot baths were giving her nothing but odd stares from Mrs. Peters, their neighbor. She returned to the flat to find her father at the kitchen table, already at work on his typewriter. A sheen of anxious perspiration lay across his nose, despite the chill air. She couldnt remember the last time shed seen Pa relaxed. With every passing day, he drew himself tighter and smaller, like a spider drawing its legs in to die. Laundry hung from the pulley that ran parallel to the kitchen ceiling. Ma was still asleep behind the curtain that divided the living area from the sleeping area. An early start? Beattie asked. He glanced up and smiled a little. I might say the same for you, he said in his crisp English accent. Mas Scots accent was thicker than Glasgow fog, and Beatties lay somewhere between the two. You were late home from the restaurant, and here you are up and ready to work again. Beattie worked at Camilles boutique on Sauchiehall Street. Or at least she had for the last three weeks. Prior to that, shed worked in the dress section at the Poly, a department store where the customers were far less demanding but the clothes were far less beautiful. All the latest fashions from the continent came in to Camilles, and the wealthiest women in Glasgow shopped there: the wives and daughters of the shipping magnates and railway investors. Beattie regularly witnessed them spend fifty pounds or more on a gown without blinking, while she was taking home four shillings a week. You wont need to work two jobs much longer, he said, ducking his head and adjusting his spectacles. Im sure to be finished soon. I dont mind. Guilt pinched her. Pa would be appalled if he knew she was working at the club, relying on the tips of men who found her pretty, or on Henry to slip her a few pounds

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman if hed had a good nights winnings. Pa thought she was a respectable lass with her virginity intact. He returned to his work. Tap, tap, tap . . . Seeing him, anxiety so apparent on his brow, made Beatties chest hurt. It had all been so different just a year ago. Pa had been a professor of natural philosophy at Beckham College in London. Theyd not been well off, but theyd been happy enough, living in a tidy flat at the college with sun in its windows in the afternoon. Life in London had been exciting to Beattie after growing up in the little border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, with their tiny cold garden that Ma tended so carefully. But Pa had been an outspoken atheisteven though Ma had strong Scottish Protestant objectionsand the new dean, a Catholic, had quickly developed a dislike for him. Within two months hed lost his job and the flat with it. Just as she was about to step through the curtain to roll away her bed and find her shoes, Pa said, Do take care of yourself, Beattie, my dear. She paused. Her father never showed real affection, and this little morselmy dear grabbed her by the heart. She returned to the table, sitting opposite him to watch while he typed. Shed inherited his dark hair and blue eyes but not, small mercies, his distinctive nose and lipless mouth. He seemed to her in that moment as he had always seemed: a stranger right beside her, somebody she knew well but didnt know at all. Lack of money had driven them from London to Glasgow, where Beatties maternal grandmother delighted in taking judicious pity on them. Nobody had yet offered Pa another teaching job, but he refused to look for any other kind. He clung to the idea that his intellect would triumph. So he worked on his book, certain that when it was finished, a publisher would buy it and a universitysomewhere in the worldwould have him. Granny thought this was rot. If Ma agreed, she didnt let on. Pa became aware of her gaze and glanced up, puzzled. Beattie? Do you love me, Pa? Where had those words come from? Shed not intended to say them. Well . . . I . . . Flustered, he pulled off his spectacles and rubbed the lenses vigorously on his shirt. Yes, Beattie. Whatever I do? Will you always? Her heart sped, driven by a primitive fear that he could read her thoughts. As a father should. She stood, thought about touching his wrist softly, then changed her mind. Im not tired, she lied. Im just fine. He didnt look up. Good girl. I must keep working. This book isnt going to write itself. The sound of the typewriter followed her to the bedroom, where she found her shoes and buckled them on. Ma snored softly, and it cheered Beattie a little to see her face looking so peaceful. She hadnt seen Ma looking anything but tired and anxious for a long time. Pinned to the wall was the pattern for a dress Beattie had been working on. The brown paper sagged against the tacks that held it up: she hadnt had the heart for it since shed discovered she was pregnant. Why make a dress that wouldnt fit for much longer? Beattie sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her forearm across her belly. What mysteries unfolded in there? What strange new life was moving and growing? The thought

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman made her dizzy with fear. She drew her eyebrows down tightly, willing her womb to expel its contents. But nothing happened, nothing ever happened.

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION Wildflower Hill is told as a dual narrative, one following Beattie Blaxland as a young woman in the 1920s, the other following her granddaughter Emma Blaxland-Hunter in modern day. The two womens stories become intertwined across the decades when Emma gradually uncovers her grandmothers history after inheriting her sheep farm in isolated Tasmania. In 1920s Scotland, Beattie Blaxland became pregnant by her married lover Henry just before her nineteenth birthday. Abandoned by her family, Beattie and Henry set sail for a new life in Australia. After a tumultuous and trying course of events, Beattie manages to secure a Tasmanian estate, run a successful sheep farm, and later establish a highly successful womans wear business. In modern day, after an injury ends her dancing career and her boyfriend breaks her heart, Emma leaves London and returns home to Australia to recuperate. There, she discovers she has inherited her beloved grandmothers Tasmanian sheep farm, Wildflower Hill. Through cleaning out her grandmothers house and sorting through her belongings, Emma discovers secrets about her grandmothers past and begins to reevaluate her own life and priorities. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Which story did you enjoy reading more, Emmas or Beatties? How did you relate to both of them? 2. Early in the novel, Beatties friend Cora tells her: There are two types of women in the world, Beattie, those who do things and those who have things done to them. How does Beattie adopt this motto throughout her life? Does Emma live by the same credo? Do you agree with Coras theory about women? 3. How did you feel when Margaret went behind Beatties back to let Henry see Lucy? How do you feel about Mary, Henry, and Mollys determination to keep Lucy away from sin? Is this just a selfish excuse to keep Lucy away from Beattie? 4. Discuss how religion is treated in the novel. Being a good Christian is emphasized by characters such as Mary, Henry, and Molly, but Lucy feels closer to God when she prays privately, and Beattie seems to feel more in tune with the land. Talk about each characters concept of God and good vs. evil. 5. Beattie remarks that it doesnt matter how she earns money, as long as she can feed her child: Children cant eat morals. Do you agree? Do you think Beattie did the right thing working for Raphael and serving drinks illegally?

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman 6. Discuss the poker game that leads to Beatties ownership of Wildflower Hill. Why does Beattie come up with such a risky proposal? Why does Raphael agree to it? 7. Beattie often blames herself for letting Lucy be taken away. Did she do the right thing by relinquishing more and more control to Henry? Should she have filed for sole custody? What is more important, for a child to have contact with both of her parents or to be raised in the most stable, proper way possible? 8. Compare and contrast Beatties relationshipswith Henry, Charlie, and Ray. Do you think Beattie should have told Ray about her former relationships? How do you think he would have reacted? 9. How do you think Beattie would have reacted if she knew Charlies death was actually a murder? Do you think Leo was right to keep the truth from her? 10. Why do you think Beattie kept every record from her past at Wildflower Hill? Was it as Emma muses, that she was clinging to every scrap, or do you have a different theory? 11. The setting of the book is described beautifully, through the vivid description of Wildflower Hill and its contrast to the city of London. What was your favorite scene? 12. How does Emmas sense of identity, priorities, and relationships change throughout the novel? What event impacts her the most? Compare and contrast her transformation with Beatties. 13. Discuss Minas fathers reluctance to see Mina perform. Do you understand his embarrassment? Why does Patrick refuse to get involved? 14. Emma decides to finally visit Lucy and deliver her grandmothers letter, even though her grandmother never intended to send it. How do you think Lucy will receive her? What do you envision happening after the close of the novel?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB 1. Do a little research on Tasmania to help envision the setting of Wildflower Hill. Visit http://www.discovertasmania.com/about_tasmania for information, maps, and photographs. To take a virtual tour, visit http://tourtasmania.com/. 2. Visit Kim Wilkinss blog at http://fantasticthoughts.wordpress.com/ and read her thoughts on the writing process, her many novels, daily life, and more!

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman 3. Before her injury, Emma was a prima ballerina. Go to the ballet with your book club and see the dance that Emma dedicated her life to. 4. Emma is greatly impacted by her involvement with Mina and the rest of the Hollyhock dancers. Watch a video about the Adaptive Dance Program, a dance class for children with Down syndrome founded by Childrens Hospital Boston and the Boston Ballet in 2002 at http://www.childrenshospital.org/patientsfamilies/videos/Adaptive_Dance_Final.mov.

A CONVERSATION WITH KIM WILKINS Youve written many acclaimed books in the fantasy and horror genres. What made you decide to branch into womens fiction? How does writing in these genres differ? Do you have a preference? I had written a lot of books very close together, basing them on mythology and history, and I was a little burned out. Also, I felt I had said all I had to say in that genre for the time being. So I sat with my agent on her couch and we were talking about the books we used to love in the 80s, like Lace and A Woman of Substance, and she said, Why dont you write something like that for a change? I loved the idea of doing something fresh and different. What made you decide to use the pen name of Kimberley Freeman on some of your books and your real name, Kim Wilkins, for others? I used the pen name because I didnt think there was much cross-over between the readerships. Freeman is my grandmothers maiden name, but Kim Freeman sounded like it could be a man. So I made it Kimberley. Its very strange to walk into a bookshop and have the staff call me Kimberley though. Tell us about the research that went into writing Wildflower Hill. What inspired you to set it in Tasmania? Do you have any experience with ballet? I did ballet as a small child and I was just terrible at it. I was a blue fairy at the end-of-year concert, and somehow ended up on the side of the stage with the pink fairies and never really recovered from the shame. But I read a lot of ballet books and I still enjoy watching ballet. I decided to set the book in Tasmania because its such a wild, breathtaking place. And its right down there at the bottom of the world, tucked away, out of sight, and so underappreciated! Apart from that, I had to do a lot of historical research, but I always enjoy that aspect of my work immensely. We never hear from Cora again after Beattie leaves Scotland. What do you think happened to her? What kind of life did she end up living?

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman I imagine she would have had a privileged life with few worries, financially anyway. I think it says in the book that she has a baby, and Beattie is jealous at the idea of the life of ease she might have. But of course, money doesnt guarantee happiness. The original title of the novel was Field of Clouds. What was the origin of that title, and why did it change to Wildflower Hill? I called it Field of Clouds because when I was down in Tasmania researching (in the middle of winter) there was one day on the farm that the fog simply didnt lift, and it felt like the fields were full of clouds rather than crops. But the name of the farm was always Wildflower Hill and we thought it was a much more vibrant, inviting title. You mention on your blog that you struggled at times through the writing process of Wildflower Hill. Was this book more difficult than your others? How do you overcome obstacles such as writers block? I struggle with every single book. Sometimes I wonder why I continue to write them! Every book is difficult, every book has unique challenges that I have to find unique solutions to. But I am just psychologically better equipped to deal with them because Ive written so many now (21 including childrens books). So writers block doesnt present as a big problem for me. I know that theres only one way around it, and thats to think a bit more, then write a bit more, and chip away at it slowly. Then Im back in the swing and off again. But yes, I do sometimes moan about how hard it all is on my blog. Gambling plays quite an important role in Beatties life. Did you have to do any kind of research or are you familiar with cards yourself? No, but my dad was a gambler so I was well aware of how much one can win or lose. As for the card game that plays an important part in the plot, I had to get a couple of friends who are mathematicians to work out how much should be bet at each stage to achieve the right result. I am pretty bad at math. You have created two very different protagonists with Emma and Beattie. What made you decide to tell the story through their alternating viewpoints? Did you enjoy writing for one woman more than the other? Whom do you identify with most? I loved them both so much. I loved how prickly and self-absorbed Emma was and how she slowly softened and found out what was really important. I do identify with her (being a sometimes prickly and self-absorbed person!). But Beattie had my heart. No matter how much life beat her down, she just kept getting up. She had a strong moral compass and an unbreakable spirit. Wildflower Hill has been enthusiastically received in Australia. How do you think it will translate to an American audience?

Wildflower Hill, by Kimberley Freeman I am so pleased and proud to be sharing the book with the US. I really hope that my characters connect with your readers, and that the parts set in Australia will be interesting to them. At its heart, Wildflower Hill is a simple story about a woman who didnt know a big secret about her grandmother, and I think thats a story that can relate to any audience. The ending of the novel leaves the reader wondering what happens next. Any plans for a sequel? What do you think happens after Lucy opens the door to Emma? I have no doubt Lucy would welcome her with open arms. Age makes people wise, and Lucy would definitely want to know her family. So, no plans for a sequel. I had one reader over here who was so distressed that I didnt say exactly what happened, that I opened her book and handwrote the last line, And Lucy took Emma inside and loved her to pieces. So, yes, thats what I think happened next.

THE DOVEKEEPERS
Alice Hoffman
Scribner Available in hardcover October 2011: 9781451617474 eBook: 9781451617498

The most ambitious and mesmerizing novel Alice Hoffman has ever written, The Dovekeepers is a story of murder, magic, faith, love, loyalty, fate, and personal destiny. The lives of four sensuous, bold, resourceful women intersect in the year 70 C.E., during the desperate days of the siege of Jerusalem, when supplies of food and water are dwindling and the Romans are drawing near.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman

Authors Note
Once in a lifetime a book may come to a writer as an unexpected gift. The Dovekeepers is such a book for me. It was a gift from my great-great grandmothers, the women of ancient Israel who first spoke to me when I visited the mountain fortress of Masada. In telling their story of loss and love, Ive told my own story as well. After writing for thirty-five years, after more than thirty works of fiction, I was given the story I was meant to tell. The Dovekeepers is a novel set during and after the fall of Jerusalem (70 C.E.). The book covers a period of four years as the Romans waged war against the Jewish stronghold of Masada, claimed by a group of 900 rebels and their families. The story is taken from the historian Josephus, who has written the only account of the siege, in which he reported that two women and five children survived the massacre on the night when the Jews committed mass suicide rather than submit to the Roman Legion. It was they who told the story to the Romans and, therefore, to the world. I have researched The Dovekeepers for many years, relying not only on Josephuss account, but also on the findings of Yigal Yadin, the archaeologist who led the Masada project. Alice Hoffman

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memory. Alice Hoffman details her inspiring first trip to Masada.

I was initially inspired by my first visit to Masada, a spiritual experience so intense and moving, I felt as though the lives that had been led there two thousand years earlier were utterly fresh and relevant. The tragic events of the past and the extraordinary sacrifices that were made in this fortress seemed to be present all around me. It was as if those who had lived there, and died there, had passed by only hours before. The temperature was well over a hundred degrees and the horizon was shaky with blue heat. In that great silence, standing inside the mystery that is the past, surrounded by the sorrow of the many deaths that occurred there, I also felt surrounded by life and by the stories of the women who had been there. In that moment, The Dovekeepers came to life as well.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman Beautiful, harrowing, a major contribution to twenty-first-century literature. Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate in Literature I am still reeling from The Dovekeepersfrom the history Alice Hoffman illuminates, from the language she uses to bring these women to life. This novel is a testament to the human spirit and to love rising from the ashes of war. But most of all, this novel is one that will never be forgotten by a reader. Jodi Picoult, author of Sing You Home Alice Hoffmans new novel The Dovekeepers is told in four parts, in the voices of four women: Yael, Revka, Aziza, and Shira. Here are excerpts from each part of the novel.

Yael

All the while I was growing up I wondered what it might be like to have a father who wouldnt turn away from the sight of me, one who told me I was beautiful, even though my hair flamed a strange red color and my skin was sprinkled with earth-toned flecks as though Id been splattered with mud. Id heard my father say to another man that these marks were specks of my mothers blood. Afterward, I tried to pluck them out with my fingers, drawing blood from my own flesh, but my brother stopped me when he discovered the red-rimmed pockmarks on my arms and legs. He assured me the freckles were bits of ash that had fallen from the stars in the sky. Because of this I would always shine in the darkness. He would always be able to find me, no matter how far he might travel. When I became a woman, I had no mother to tell me what to do with the blood that came with the moon or escort me to the mikvah, the ritual bath that would have cleansed me with a total immersion into purity. The first time I bled I thought I was dying until an old woman who was my neighbor took pity on me and told me the truth about womens monthly cycles. I lowered my eyes as she spoke, shamed to be told such intimate details by a stranger, not quite believing her, wondering why our God would cause me to become unclean. Even now I think I might have been right to tremble in fear on the day that I first bled. Perhaps my becoming a woman was the end for me, for I had been born in blood and deserved to be taken from life in the same way. I didnt bother to ring my eyes with kohl or rub pomegranate oil onto my wrists. Flirtation was not something I practiced, nor did I think myself attractive. I didnt perfume my hair but instead wound the plaits at the nape of my neck, then covered my head with a woolen shawl of the plainest fabric I could find. My father addressed me only when he summoned me to bring his meal or wash his garments. By then I had begun to realize what it was that he did when he slipped out to meet with his cohorts at night. He often wrapped a pale gray cloak around his shoulders, one that was said to have been woven from the strands of a spiders web. I had touched the hem of the garment once. It was both sinister and beautiful, granting its wearer the ability to conceal himself. When my father went out, he disappeared, for he had the power to vanish while he was still before you.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman Id heard him called an assassin by our neighbors. I frowned and didnt believe this, but the more I studied his comings and goings, the more I knew it to be true. He was part of a secret group, men who carried the curled dagger of the Sicarii, Zealots who hid sharp knives in their cloaks which they used to punish those who refused to fight Rome, especially the priests who accepted the legions sacrifices and their favor at the Temple. The assassins were ruthless, even I knew that. No one was safe from their wrath; other Zealots disowned them, objecting to their brutal methods. It was said that the Sicarii had taken the fight against Jews who bowed to Rome too far, and that Adonai, our great God, would never condone murder, especially of brother against brother. But the Jews were a divided brotherhood, already at odds in practice if not in prayer. Those who belonged to the Sicarii laughed at the notion that God desired anything other than for all men to be free. The price was of no consequence. Their goal was one ruler alone, no emperors, no kings, only the King of Creation. He alone would rule when they were done with their work on earth. My father had been an assassin for so long that the men he had killed were like leaves on a willow tree, too many to count. Because he possessed a skill that few men had and claimed the power of invisibility, he could slip into a room as a shadow might, dispatching his enemy before his victim was even aware that a window had been opened or a door had closed. To my sorrow, my brother followed our fathers path as soon as he was old enough to become a disciple of vengeance. Amram was dangerously susceptible to their violent ways, for in his purity he saw the world as either good or evil with no twilight space in between. I often spied them huddled together, my father speaking in my brothers ear, teaching him the rules of murder. One day as I gathered Amrams tunics and cloak to wash at the well I found a dagger, already rippled with a line of crimson. I would have wept had I been able, but I had forsaken tears. I would not drown another as I had drowned my own mother, from the inside out. Still, I went in search of my brother, finding him in the market with his friends. Women alone were not often seen among the men who came to these narrow passageways; those who had no choice but to go out unaccompanied rushed to the Street of the Bakers or to the stalls that offered pottery and jugs made from Jerusalem clay, then, just as quickly, rushed home. I wore a veil and my cloak clasped tightly. There were zonnoth in the market, women who sold themselves for mens pleasure and did not cover their arms or their hair. One mocked me as I ran past, her sullen face breaking into a grin when she spied me dashing through the alleyway. You think youre any different than we are? she called. Youre only a woman, as we are. I pulled my brother away from his friends so that we might stand beneath a flame tree. The red flowers gave off the scent of fire, and I thought this was an omen, that my brother would know fire. I worried over what would happen to him when night came and the Sicarii gathered under cedars where they made their plans. I begged him to renounce the violent ways hed taken up, but my brother, young as he was, burned for justice and a new order where all men were equal. I cant reconsider my faith, Yaya. Then consider your life was my answer.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman To tease me, Amram clucked like a chicken, strutting, his lean, strong body hunched over as he flapped imaginary wings. Do you want me to stay home in the henhouse, where you can lock me inside and make sure Im safe? I laughed despite my fears. My brother was brave and beautiful. No wonder my father favored him. His hair was golden, his eyes dark but flecked with light. I saw now that the child I had once mothered had become a man, one who was pure in his intentions. I could do little more than object to the path that he chose. Still I was determined to act on his behalf. When my brother rejoined his friends, I went on through the market, making my way deep within the twisting streets, at last turning in to an alley that was cobbled with dusty, dun-colored bricks. Id heard it was possible to buy good fortune nearby. There was a mysterious shop spoken about in whispers by the neighborhood women. They usually stopped their discussion when I came near, but Id been curious and had overheard that if a person followed the scrawled image of an eye inside a circle she would be led to a place of medicines and spells. I took the path of the eye until I came to the house of keshaphim, the breed of magic practiced by women, always pursued in secret. When I knocked on the door, an old woman came to study me. Annoyed by my presence, she asked why Id come. As soon as I hesitated, she began to close the door against me, grumbling. I dont have time for someone who doesnt know what she wants, she muttered. Protection for my brother, I managed to say, too unnerved to reveal any more. At the Temple there was the magic of the priests, holy men who were anointed by prayer, chosen to give sacrifices and attempt miracles and perform exorcisms, driving out the evil that can often possess men. In the streets there was the magic of the minim, who were looked down upon by the priests, called charlatans and impostors by some, yet who were still respected by many. Houses of keshaphim, however, were considered to engage in the foulest sort of magic, womens work, evil, vengeful, practiced by those who were denounced as witches. But the min who performed curses and spells would have never spoken to a girl such as I if I had no silver to hand over and no father or brother to recommend me. And had I gone to the priests for an amulet, they would have denied me, for I was the daughter of one who opposed them. Even I knew I didnt deserve their favor. The room behind the old woman was unlit, but I glimpsed herbs and plants draped from the ceiling on lengths of rope. I recognized rue and myrtle and the dried yellow apples of the mandrake, what is called yavrucha, an herb that is both aphrodisiac and antidemonic in nature, poisonous and powerful. I thought I heard the sound of a goat, a pet witches are said to have, from inside the dim chamber. Before you waste my time, do you have shekels enough for protection? the old woman asked. I shook my head. I had no coins, but Id brought a precious hand mirror with me. It had belonged to my mother and was beautifully crafted, made of bronze and silver and gold, set with a chunk of deep blue lapis. It was the one thing I had of any value. The ancient woman examined it and then, satisfied, took my offering and went inside. After she shut the door, I heard the clatter of a lock. For a moment I wondered if she had disappeared for good, if perhaps Id never see her or my mirror again, but she came back outside and told me to open my hand.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman Youre sure you dont want this charm for yourself? she cautioned, insisting there was only one like it in all the world. You might need protection in this life. I shook my head, and as I did my plain woolen veil fell. When the old woman saw the scarlet color of my hair, she backed away as though shed discovered a demon at her door. Its good you dont want it, she said. It wouldnt work for you. You need a token thats far more powerful. I snapped up the charm, then turned and started away. I was surprised when she called for me to wait. You dont ask why? The market woman was signaling to me, urging me to return, but I refused. You dont want to know what I see for you, my sister? I can tell you what you will become. I know what I am. I was the child born of a dead woman, the one who couldnt bear to look at her own face. I was immensely glad to be rid of that mirror. I dont need you to tell me, I called to the witch in the alleyway. Revka

Before we came here we believed that our village in the Valley of the Cypresses was heaven, or perhaps we imagined it was not unlike the heaven we would someday enter. We should have known it would be taken from us. Nothing in this world is lasting, only our faith lives on. One day soldiers from the legion arrived, six across, walking down roads my own father had helped to build. First the legionnaires came, trained in Rome, decorated with chain mail and helmets; then the fierce auxiliary troops arrived, many of them tribesmen, wearing leather tunics, carrying long broadswords and lances. They wanted any riches they could find. From that morning when they entered our village, our land belonged to them and our lives did, too. They killed a white cockerel on the steps of the synagogue. In our law, that is a sin. They were well aware of this doctrine. The birds blood defiled us. This initial act of violence announced what the future would bring, if only the priests had bothered to read the signs left behind by the roosters bones. A hundred of our people went to rally against the legion and demand an apology. These were men who paid taxes and had homes and families, reputable, honest men who were certain this day would end with an apology from Rome. They could not have been more wrong. We did not see beyond the cypresses that grew with fragrant twisted bark set within a wood that had been there for so long we thought it would last forevermore. Outrage howled from ruined villages nearby for those who could hear, but we turned a deaf ear to their misery. For those who breathed deeply, there was the stink of war, but it was also the season when the oleanders pink blooms sent out their fragrance and perfumed the air. Our land had been conquered many times, the sweet groves and fields drawing outsiders to us just as surely as the baker called to his customers with the rich scent of his loaves. But that was in the past; we wanted to believe that our lives were settled. My husband paid no attention to what was happening. In that he was indeed single-minded, as well as hardworking. The wise men and rabbis bowed to the legion, accepting taxes so high we could barely survive, but as long as there was wood for his ovens, my husband was happy. He cut the logs himself, and there was a pile as

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman tall as a mountain in our yard. My husband asked only for a blessing from Adonai for what he was about to bring forth into this world each day, the mystery of the challah. He had white powder in the creases of his skin. Each time he kissed me he left a white mark, a bakers kiss. He assured me that, if we paid no attention to what was around us and did no harm, we would be safe. People always needed bread. He left our home determined to bring the first round loaves to the synagogue as an offering, as he always did. He had vowed to avoid trouble, but on this day it found him. Our neighbors had collected in a beleaguered group on their way to plead their case so they would not lose their homes to the Romans. My husband was convinced to go with them. He had his tray of offerings, the loaves covered by a prayer shawl that had been so finely spun gold threads were braided among the purple fringes. He was ready to go to the rabbis, but when his neighbors scolded him and said all men must make a stand, he was compelled to make his mark with the others. The letter R fashioned into the crusts of the loaves he baked should have been enough of a mark for him, my name his inspiration and his shield. Instead, he joined those men who wanted more. I knew something was wrong when I smelled smoke. There were loaves in the oven. I checked them, but they werent yet burning. Why did he go on this day of all days? Why on this morning was he not single-minded when at all other times he saw nothing but his own bakery? The barley, the salt, the coriander, the cumin, these were the ingredients that made up his world. Until now the only difficulty that had plagued my husband was that rats slunk through the windows; like many bakers, he often had to lay down hemlock to turn them away from the flour bins. Now there was peril in every corner of our world. The demons had flung open the doors to our village. They had declared us to be victims as they stood on a dark ledge and rubbed their hands together gleefully. What you are given, they declared, we now take away. As the hours passed, I began to pace back and forth in alarm. The baker had expected to return before the loaves in the slow-burning oven were brown. Does a man go off and disappear like that? Hed told me to remove the loaves when the sun was in the center of the sky if he hadnt yet returned. I didnt. What had he meant by that? Had he had some idea of the trouble to come? Noon came and went. I gazed out in alarm as I saw the shadows lengthening, the smoke drifting over courtyards and roofs. I thought if I waited to remove the loaves, my husband would smell the bread and know it was burning and run back home. At worst he would be cross with me for not doing as I was instructed. But he still hadnt returned when the sun had begun to drop down in the direction of evening. By now the loaves were charred, the crusts black with soot. I had one thought, and that was to find my husband. I could be single-minded, too, perhaps that was what had bound us together for so many years. I opened the door, frantic to begin a search for the Baker, ready to dart into the street though it was now teeming with our neighbors, many of them stained with their own blood and with the blood of their fathers. As I was readying myself to leave, I found my son-in-law, Yoav, in my doorway. He wasnt a fighter then, not yet the warrior who would vow to never again cut his hair. Instead, he was a gentle man who longed to run from trouble. He had the panicked look of a scholar who is suddenly faced with the brutalities and the vile concerns of life. Like my husband, he had

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman been dedicated to his work, concerned with his studies and with the will of Adonai. I had already wrapped my head scarf close to my skull, possessed with the intention to search for my husband, but my son-in-law stopped me. He warned I must prepare myself for what he had to say. I raised my chin, ready to push past him, not willing to listen. What could stop me from going to my husband? What excuse could my son-in-law offer that might compel me to give up my search? My son-in-law, who was devout and would never touch a woman other than my daughter, his wife, placed his hand on my arm. There is a reason I tell you not to go out there, he murmured. There could be only one reason. A world that had unraveled so completely that the man Id spent a lifetime with had been lost. I could see the truth in my son-in-laws eyes when he began to speak. He confessed he had seen the husk that had been my husband in the center of our town, cast upon the plaza with dozens of our neighbors, broken like a branch in the wind. It was too late to retrieve the body. If I tried, I would only lose my life as well. Despite his report, I tried to push past the place where my son-in-law had planted himself in my doorway. He was stronger than I imagined, or perhaps I was weakened by regret. Listen to me, Yoav insisted. He said it in a way that gave me no choice but to hear. There is no other way for me to say this, and no time to reason with you. Your husband is already in the World-to-Come. There was no map to lead the living there. I could not reach him. The Romans were already piling up bodies in the street. They had lit the fire which had alerted me to the misery of the day. Now I realized it was not bread I smelled on the waves of smoke pouring through town but the bitter odor of flesh. Yoav was a young rabbi who was respected and learned; because of his rank hed had to think twice before taking a bakers daughter as his bride. Most rabbis searched out other rabbis daughters in marriage, for like congregated with like, as the birds in the sky gathered with their own kind. But of course Yoav had wanted my daughter. Zara was beautiful beyond measure. No wonder he had courted her, ignoring the more suitable girls who chased after him. My daughters name meant beautiful morning, and she truly was brighter than anything in this world, her skin golden, her hair like wheat, her countenance made even more lovely because her black eyes were a reminder of night before morning broke through, a time when the world was a mystery and shadows were all we had. Id often wondered if perhaps Zara had been given to me by an angel. How else could a plain woman such as I be blessed with a daughter who resembled a queen? I took great pride in her, and for good reason. I never once stopped to consider that what you are given can also be taken away.

Aziza

Even now I am drawn to the ways of my old life. I spend as little time as possible inside the dovecotes. Doves do not interest me, no womens work does. I cannot weave or sew without pricking my fingers. When I cook, I burn the flatbread. My stew is tasteless no matter what ingredients I might add to the pot. There is not enough salt or cumin in the world to make my

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman attempts palatable. I am clumsy at tasks my sister could complete with ease when she was a mere eight years old. I often find myself beside the barracks, pulled there especially on the evenings that mark the new month, Rosh Chodesh, when the women gather to celebrate, for it is not with them I belong but here, alongside the warriors. When I find arrowheads, I hold them in the palm of my hand, talismans from my past. The blades fit perfectly in my grasp. Their cold, flat weight is what I yearn for. Metal alone can reach the center of who I am. I have been in this fortress for so long, but I still dreamed of that other time, though I told no one, not even Amram, to whom I have pledged myself, despite my mothers warnings. Some things are meant to be kept secret, I learned that young, and I have kept our secret well. My mother may be flooded with doubts, but she has no proof that I have disobeyed. Shes piled salt outside our threshold, so that I might leave footprints, but I leap over, leaving no trace. Shes tied a strand of her hair across the doorway, but I merely crawl beneath it. I can outwit her at some things; all the same, I think of her prophecy every time I meet Amram. I am his, yet I know I have disgraced myself in keeping the truth from my own mother, the one who gave me life not once but three times. From the start my sister was my accomplice. We had been here for nearly a year, working beside our mother in the dovecotes, when Amram first arrived. We spent days devoted to toil. The three dovecotes were like a family of goatsthe father, built as a tower, then came mother and child, square and squat, small and then smaller yet again. They were my world then, as I avoided our neighbors and kept away from other women, afraid they would somehow see through to the differences between us. When Amram arrived from Jerusalem at the beginning of the summer in the year the Temple fell, he was merely one more young man running from his enemies, convicted by his bloodline as well as by his actions, an assassin who could be seen as a murderer or a hero depending on who you were and where fate had placed you. I happened to be there, crossing the plaza. I was nearly sixteen, but still I kept to myself. I did not take note of any man until I saw Amram climb the serpents path. He did so easily, as though the rugged cliffs were little more than a field. What was steep and difficult for others was for Amram no different than air to the lark. It was clear he could conquer whatever came before him, man or beast, even the land itself. Watching him, I was almost ashamed of how handsome I found him. He was the warrior I wished I had become, fluid and lean, sure of himself. I envied him and wanted to possess him and all that he had. I remembered the way the dusk fell on the other side of the Salt Sea in waves of deep blue on the day my mother warned me of the prophecy that I should avoid love at all costs. But I was born to disobey her. I knew this when I found I could not look away from Amram. I tried and failed, though I was iron and stronger than most in such matters. Aziza, the powerful, was somehow undone. Was there some angel or demon who remembered what my name had once been and now called me Rebekah from the reaches of heaven? I stood there like any other woman at the Snake Gate alongside all the rest who gathered there, charmed and seduced by Amram even before he reached us. Perhaps the moment might have passed and I would have turned away and resumed my duties, if only he hadnt seen me as well, if we hadnt been transformed by a single glance that passed between us. I realized I had been caught from the moment Id given in to my impulse to

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman stand upon the wall to cheer him on. My intention was otherwise. Merely to view the sort of man I might have been in my second life. Instead, I became a woman in that instant. I gazed through the shimmering heat, watching his fate and mine twine together as he climbed the serpent path. I was curious, drawn to him. When the rains came, I stood beside the armory, dripping wet, hoping to catch a glimpse of this man at the barracks. I circled the wall, in search of signs marking where he had walked: an arrowhead, a footprint, a strand of hair. When the dust rose I thought of him, when I gazed into the sky I was reminded of him, when I fetched water, ate my dinner, worked among the doves, all of it, no matter how trivial, brought him to mind. I would not have pursued him, but one day he stood in my path as my sister and I hurried to the dovecote. I raised a hand to shield my eyes so I could take him in and so that I might hide the mark beneath my eye. In that instant I was claimed yet again. He grinned, convinced he knew me, and I grinned back, knowing he did not. Our mother was waiting for us. Had she been beside us, I would have been made to turn away. Perhaps everything that followed would have been different, but as fate would have it, she wasnt there, and for that I was immensely thankful. Nahara threw me a look when I told her to go on, but she did as I asked. You come this way every day, Amram remarked once my sister had gone. How would you know? I spoke to him as I had once spoken to Nouri, as though I were an equal, not one who would bow before him. Because I watch you. I felt the way I had when I was in the mountains, myself once more. Not as often as I watch you, I said, my grin widening. Because Id grown up among boys, I didnt have the guile of a woman. Amram laughed, surprised by my honesty. I suppose when I first kissed him, holding nothing back, I did so as a man would, unwound by ardor. If he was surprised by that, he was not displeased.

Shira

As a girl in Alexandria, I often watched my mother leaf through her notebook when I was meant to be asleep on the pallet at the foot of her bed, which was worthy of a queen, raised off the floor and covered by a fine linen cloth, threaded with strands of purple and gold. My mother looked fierce in the half-light, her black hair falling down her back. In the evenings she burned balsam in an earthenware bowl. The smoke that spiraled up toward the ceiling was pale, much like the inner feathers of a doves wing. The scent was of lands far away, where the fields were always green and acacia trees grew. My mother had been chosen to go to Alexandria and live among a sect of Greeks and Jews because she was so beautiful and so learned. Because of this she wore secret tattoos imprinted on her skin, intricate designs fashioned with sharpened reeds that had been dipped in henna. These proclaimed her status as a kedeshah. After her initiation,

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman she often kept herself hidden, for although her status was revered among many in Alexandria, the Temple in Jerusalem outlawed such practices. The women who joined in this way of life believed that few were closer to Shechinah than the kedeshah. They embraced the feminine aspect of God, the Dwelling, the deep place where inspiration abided, for in the written words of God, compassion and knowledge were always female. This is why the lilies grew in my mothers garden and why she was allowed knowledge of Hebrew and Greek and could converse with any man. When the priests came to visit, I was sent from the house, and I would go into the garden. Among the hedges, there grew the white blooms of the henna flower that turned a mysterious, sacred shade of red when prepared as a dye. I often spent my time beside a small fountain fashioned of blue and white ceramic tiles. I was not pleased to be sent from my mother, but I occupied myself, a skill learned by children who must sometimes act older than their age. The water lilies rested on plump green pads that trailed pale, fleshy tendrils below them in the waters of the fountain. Birds came to drink, offering their songs in return for quenching their thirst. My mother had told me to be silent, and I did as she asked. I practiced until I could sit so still I became invisible to the birds that fluttered down from the pine trees. Often they would alight on my shoulders and on my knees. I could feel their nimble hearts beating as they sang in sheer gratitude for the shade and comfort of our garden. Once, when I was little more than four, I was sent out for several hours in the burning- hot sun. I was so angry to have been cast out of our chamber into the brutal heat of noon that I threw myself into the fountain. The ceramic tiles were cool and slippery on my feet. In my childish fury, I leapt without thinking of the consequences. The instant I did, the heat of the day disappeared. I held my breath as I went under. With the green water all around me, I immediately felt I had found a home. This was the element I was meant for. The world itself spun upside down, and yet it seemed more mine than any other place. I wanted to close my eyes and drift forever. I saw bubbles formed of my own breath. All at once someone grabbed for me roughly. The priest ripped me out of the water. He shook me and told me that little girls who played with water drowned and that no one would feel sorry for me if this should be my fate. But I hadnt drowned, and I looked up at him, defiant and dripping with water. I could feel a new power within me, one that gave me the courage to glare at this holy man. I could see my mothers glance focused on me in a strange manner, her gaze lingering on my drenched form from the doorway where she stood. Her hair was loose, and she was wearing only a white shawl wrapped around her naked body. The henna tattoos swirling across her throat and breasts and arms were drawn in honeyed patterns, as if she were a flower rather than a woman. Not long after my dive into the fountain, my mother took me to the Nile. It was here, on the shore of the mightiest river, that Moses had inscribed Gods name upon gold, throwing it into the waters, begging the Almighty to allow the Exodus of our people to begin. It was a long journey to undertake, but my mother insisted we must go. Our servants brought us there in a cart pulled by donkeys. A tent was lifted over our heads to protect our skins from burning as we traveled. We set off in the middle of the night so that the voyage would be cooler. We rested during the heat of the next day, then set off once again. As I dozed I listened to the wheels of our cart and the drone of our servants speaking to each other in Greek, the language we all

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman spoke publicly, whether we were Jews or Egyptians, pagans or Greeks. Our donkeys were white and well brushed, their gait even and quick. We had fruit in a basket to eat whenever we were hungry, along with cakes made of dates and figs. I wondered if I were a princess, and my mother a queen. The air gleamed with heat, but the closer we drew to the river, the cooler the breeze became. Morning was rising, and people were already busy in the working world around us. The mass of life was noisy on the road to the river, the air scented with cinnamon and cardamom. There were pepper trees and date palms that were taller than any Id seen before. I felt a shimmer of excitement, and great satisfaction at being alone with my mother. For once I did not have to share her. She allowed me to play with the two golden amulets she wore at her throat, and the serpent key that gleamed in the sunlight. My mother wore a white tunic and sandals. She had oiled and braided her own hair and mine, as she would have had we been attending a ritual to make an offering. As we drew even nearer to the river, the hour was still early, the sky pink. There was the rich scent of mud and lilies. Women had brought baskets of laundry to wash and then dry on the banks, and men were setting out in narrow, flat-bottomed wooden fishing boats, their oars turning as they called to one another, their woven nets flashing through the air as they tossed them out for their catch. My mother leaned down to whisper that we had arrived at our destination. She told me that, if water was indeed my element, I must learn to swim with my eyes open. I must control it or it would control me. To take charge of a substance so powerful, one had to give in to it first, become one with it, then triumph. We went through the reeds, though they were sharp as they slapped against us, leaving little crisscross serrations on our legs in a pattern of Xs. I saw herons and storks fishing for their breakfasts. Our feet sank in the mud, and as we went deeper our tunics flowed out around us. The Nile always grew fat after the full moon in summer, its water a great gift in a time of brutal heat. I could feel how refreshing and sweet it was. I had never known the sense of true delight, how intense pleasure coursed through your body slowly, and then, suddenly, in a rush of sensation. All at once you possessed the river, as it possessed you in turn. I had the sense that I belonged to these waters and always had. Now well discover who you will be, my mother said to me, eager to see what her daughter might become. I sank under, my eyes open. I would have blinked had my mother not told me to be vigilant. I trusted her and always did as she said. I made certain to keep my eyes wide. Because of this I saw a vision I would carry with me for my entire life. There was a fish as large as a man. He was luminous in the murky dark. He was enormous, a creature who needed neither breath nor earth, as I did, and yet I had no fear of him. Rather, tenderness rose inside me. I felt he was my beloved. I reached out, and he ventured close enough for me to run my hand over his cold, silvery scales. I arose from the river with a sense of joy, but also with a melancholy I had not known before. It is not usual for a child to feel such sadness when nothing has changed and the world around is still the same. Yet I had a sense of extreme loss. When I told my mother about the fish, she said I had seen my destiny. She didnt seem at all surprised.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman Did he bite you? she asked. I shook my head. The fish had seemed very kind. Well, he will, my mother told me. Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away. I did not know what this meant, though I knew the world was a dangerous place for a woman. Still, I did not understand how a person whose element was water could stay away from fish. They say that a woman who practices magic is a witch, and that every witch derives her power from the earth. There was a great seer who advised that, should a man hold a witch in the air, he could then cut off her powers, thereby making her helpless. But such an attempt would have no effect on me. My strength came from water, my talents buoyed by the river. On the day I swam in the Nile and saw my fate in the ink blue depths, my mother told me that I would have powers of my own, as she did. But there was a warning she gave to me as well: If I were ever to journey too far from the water, I would lose my power and my life. I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.

The Dovekeepers, by Alice Hoffman

Reading Group Guide

1. Alice Hoffman centers the book on the lives of four women: Yael, Revka, Aziza, and Shirah. Which of these women did you find most compelling, and why? 2. The Dovekeepers was inspired by the authors first visit to Masada, where she said she felt transported by the sense that the lives that had been lived there so long ago were still utterly fresh and relevant. How is it different reading a book that you know is inspired by a true historical tragedy versus a tale wholly conceived in an authors imagination? 3. Though Alice Hoffman has been a bestselling author for over three decades, The Dovekeepers is described as Alice Hoffmans masterpiece, and Toni Morrison has called it a major contribution to twenty-first-century literature. If you are familiar with Hoffmans previous workssuch as Practical Magic or Here on Earthhow would you describe The Dovekeepers differently in scope and style? For the complete reading group guide, visit ReadingGroups.SimonandSchuster.com.

AMARYLLIS IN BLUEBERRY
Christina Meldrum
Gallery Books Paperback: 9781439156896 eBook: 9781439195369

Christina Meldrum pierces the faade of a middle American family, exposing the heart of each individual through the unflinching voices of the others. Her keen, distinct prose pulls you into a world both mystical and recognizable. A uniquely memorable read that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
Carol Cassella, national bestselling author of Oxygen and Healer

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum

Authors Note
Amaryllis in Blueberry is a novel that can be read on a few levels, I think. In one respect, it is a murder mystery: the story of an American woman named Seena Slepy who is on trial in a small West African village for the murder of her husband, told from the perspective of Seena herself, Seenas four teenage daughters, Seenas husband, Dick, and two additional characters. The key question is: Did Seena truly kill Dick? If she didnt, then who did, and why? But on another level Amaryllis in Blueberry is a family drama: the story of an American family that escapes from Michigan to West Africa, only to discover they cannot escape themselves. In this sense, Amaryllis in Blueberry is a familys journey, both abroad and within. And finally, on a deeper level, Amaryllis in Blueberry is a myth about myth itself, a story that seeks to ask: To what degree is each of our lives a myth of our own making? How much of our reality is shaped by our unique sensory perception, our unique perspective, our unique history and culture and longings? This latter question led to my writing of this book and to the creation of my character Amaryllis, the youngest daughter in the Slepy family and a character with a condition called synesthesia. Synesthesia is real albeit rare condition in which two or more of a persons senses or cognitive pathways are conjoined. What does that mean? There are many types of synesthetes: one synesthete might hear color; another might taste sound; another might see letters or numbers as having intrinsic color. My character Amaryllis has a particularly rare form of synesthesia called emotional synesthesia. When she experiences emotion in the world, she has an additional sensory response. Amaryllis tastes love; she smells anger; she hears joy. Why did I want to write about a character with synesthesia? Because I think synesthesia raises fascinating questions about the nature of reality. We all must experience reality through our senses; our senses are the filter through which we must take in the world. But there are synesthetes who experience reality through their senses differentlynot incorrectly but differentlywhich suggests reality is far more subjective than most of us realize. Why is this important? Because I think it highlights the power of perspective: How do we each find meaning and truth in life through our own very unique place in the world? Christina Meldrum

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memory. Christina Meldrum recalls a family cottage built by her great-great-grandmother.
I love when travel shakes my worldwhen my assumptions erode, my comfort zone stretches, my experience of joy, love, sadness or fury deepens and my sense of wonder grows. This type of travel is rarely easy, yet in an odd way it is easy, because it nourishes a hunger in me: it feeds my longing to grow and learn and become more than what I am. Ive been lucky enough to have many of these travel experiences in my life: as a teenager in a student exchange program, living with a family in Calw, Germany; as a college student backpacking alone around Europe, venturing into the former Yugoslavia and East Germany; between college and law school living and working in a small village in Ghana; during law school doing human rights work in Geneva, Switzerland; after law school traveling throughout Egypt and Israel; and more recently traveling in Turkey and doing nonprofit work in Senegal. Yet not one of these places is my favorite place to which to travel. As important as these travel experiences have been to my growth as a person, there is one place in the world where I am able to find the ground again, where I feel connected to my extended family, my past and my ancestors, and where I am able to reflect on where Ive traveled and where I want to travel, both literally and figuratively, in the future. I am at this place now: the Danish Landing, Michigan, a place I write about in Amaryllis in Blueberry. Although Amaryllis in Blueberry is a completely fictional story, the Danish Landing is a real place: a conglomeration of about twenty-five tiny cottages on a communal plot of land on the shores of Lake Margrethe. Well over a hundred years ago, a group of Danish immigrants, including my great-great-grandmother, purchased the land together. They literally drew straws to decide which person would be assigned which parcel of land on which to build a small cottage. The cottage I sit in now is the cottage my great-great-grandmother built. My grandmother spent her childhood summers here, as did my mother, as did I. And now I spend time here with my children each summer. In this, my favorite place to which to travel, I feel connected to the past and to the futurea future, which I hope, will include watching my grandchildren play at the Danish Landing. And a future that I hope will involve much travel, both literal and figurative, that will shake my world and the world of my children and grandchildren.

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum

THE END West Africa

Christina Slepy? the witch doctor says again. Seena had gone silent, claimed shed nothing to say. But this wise man isnt satisfied. And Seena thinks, If only he were wise. Yet she knows the indignation she continues to feel is just another sign that she who was not a racist is a racist. She knows her arrogance is the rose- colored lenses shattered, making her see the world in disconnected pieces. Shes been choosing which rose-colored shard to look through, forgetting the shard was part of a whole, forgetting it was rose colored at all. She and her children and their choices are not the product of this wise man who is not wise. He may have opened Pandoras jar, but Seena stuffed it. Still, she hates the manshe loathes him. Perhaps more than he loathes her. She tries to acknowledge him now, to acknowledge that she is this: Christina Slepy. But she cant. Slepy, she thinks. Slepy. Shed always hated the name. Hated that she took it. Hated that shed lost part of herself when she married. Shed suggested she keep her own name, Michels, but Dick had insisted. Why would you do that? hed said. Keep your own name? Im not even sure thats legal. And shed thought, He thinks he owns me. For years hed even insisted on calling Seena by her given name, Christina, because he preferred it, even though Seenas mother had referred to her as Seena from the time she was born. Other than her mothers pearl necklace, which Seena never removes, the name Seena is the only gift from Seenas mother that Seena still owns. Even so, Seena mostly complied, let Dick own her on the surface, let him touch nothing beneath. Hed possess her body at times, but that was the surfaceanother incarnation of taking his name. It was form. Not content. Ritual, not meaning. So she could cling to the meaningless. Why didnt she see this? she wonders. Why was she so determined to hollow herself out, let nothing in? So that when lust rained down on herthis torrentthere was nothing at all to keep it out. It trickled into every crack, through every seam. Every cranny and crater and concave void in her being was transformed from parched to pulsing. And she mistook this pulsing for meaning. Now? Now the name Slepy has meaning, and she cant touch itattach it to herself because she doesnt deserve it. This part of her that she denied is now denying her. This part of her children that she discounted is now leaving them, too: the father, the name. And she yearns for them to hold itto not let it pass away.

AFTER Yllis

Ive come to learn there is a name for what I am, and I dont mean half blood, although Im that, too, more or less. But the name Im referring to is synesthete, meaning I have synesthesia, from the Greek syn, which means with, and aesthesis, which means sensation. Being with sensation is a diagnosisnot a neurosis or psychosis. Thats what Im told.

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum With sensation. Not of sensation. Not from sensation. But with. Sensation is not my essence. I do not grow from it, change from it, become something more, or less, because of it. I am with it: its mirror, its filter, its constant companion. Sensation is not in me, but with me. When Im stripped of sensation, what am I? Mama often told me Im one in a million. We synesthetes actually are ten in a million. But were ten in a million what? Is every synesthete like me: a reflection, an absorption, a sponge? As the plane slid across the heavens toward a place Papa intimated might be heaven on earth, I didnt know the name synesthesia, and neither did my family. Yet I knew her all the same. She was Mamas guilt and Papas fury, Caties hungry envy and Gracies blooming fear. She was Tessas joy and selfish greed, her cruelty and the rare but real swell of her heart. I now know some synesthetes taste shapes, and some see letters and numbers as having intrinsic color. If I were a grapheme synesthete, the planes neon orange exit sign may have been neither neon nor orange. The e may have been blue, the x purple, the i pale yellow and the t green. The blinking numbers on Papas new digital watch may have been blinking pink. If I were a synesthete with ordinal-linguistic personification, the month of September, which it was, may have been irritable or gregarious or stingy, while Thursday, which it was, may have been easygoing or laconic or generous. Or vice versa. September could have been generous and Thursday stingy. But as we passed from America to Africa, I, Yllis Slepy, synesthete that I am, saw orange neon and digital black during a personality-free Thursday in the personality-free month of September, even as I tasted and smelled and otherwise sensed what seemed an ocean of feeling in that plane. Because I am an emotional synesthete. For synesthetes like me, the world is a layer cake of emotion, and we are its consumers. We dont make the cakestirring and whipping and baking are for those without a diagnosis. With so much to consume, how could one possibly have the energy or an appetite for ones own creation? For eleven years Id been a consumer, slogging down others pain, inhaling others rage, drinking their love, jittering with their joy. Yet Id never considered who I was. Until the Day of the Snake. And then, for the first time, I tried to see myself like I saw that snake, outside the context of others emotions. But I couldnt. I couldnt at all. And I wondered why. Was it because Id been formed without a fathers love? Id seen my father, and hed turned away, as if I wasnt worth a second glance. Was I just half a persona semblance of a human formed by my mothers will, defined solely by her love? Because Mama did love methat I knew. I tasted her love with every breath of my life. Mama squeezed my hand, squeezed it like she sensed the weight in me, sensed I might drop from the plane before it dropped to the earth. Papa wants this, shed told me shortly after the plane took flight, when the air around us was still Michigan air, after Id asked her, Why Africa? Papa wants Africa, shed said. This has nothing to do with anyone but Papa. But everywhere I looked, I saw and felt and smelled, not so much Mama, but what she was avoiding. The book, A Wreath for Udomo, lay open on her lap. It takes place in Africa, she told me, when she noticed my examining it. Damp earth and no grass, I read over her shoulder. Dank heat and no air. Giant trees and dark waters. Rustle and whisper, hiss and silence. Stealth and menace . . .

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum I looked away, out the window. The land below was a puzzle of squares and rectangles and squiggly lines. Patches of green were aligned with patches of differently hued green that were aligned with patches hued like straw. Swimming pools were blue pancakes. Cars and trucks were army ants. Id never before been on a plane. I knew about gravityI had a vague sense of what it was. But I didnt understand how it worked, only that it did work. Objects like people and vehicles didnt float, they were sucked to the earth and held there. Trusting the plane could defy gravity seemed yet another version of what I had been doing my whole life: believing in something I didnt understand at all. Is this plane going to crash down? I wondered. Is it going to realize like I did that it cant defy gravity after all? Some say its a gift, what we synesthetes have. Some say were given a richer planet, one that lies somewhere between heaven and earth. Some say its like experiencing the world straight on, while everyone else stands behind glass. Some say its like entering Gods mind, seeing the dimensions intended for God alone. Some say every person on earth is a synesthete, but that the remaining 999,990 people out of a million experience synesthesia only on a subconscious level. Well, maybe so. But maybe God knew what He was doing when He hid these sensations in the great subconscious of the masses. Maybe the mistake He made was handing this so- called gift to me. While I was defying gravity on that plane, I would have handed the gift back had I known then what I had. I would have told God, Thank you just the same. Because even then I longed for what I would never have again: a father who was mine, a family to which I belonged. The plane landed in a swell. I felt the wheels slam the earth as Africa rose up around me. She was in the air, she was the air, I breathed her inthis scent that said, The earth and air are not so separate here. Like an enormous woman with folds of warm flesh, I felt her enfold me. As I looked out the window at the African earth and the African people on that earth, I sensed Africa summon me, and I let go of Mamas hand. Seemed Africa had butted in: she wanted this dance. So I wasnt completely surprised when we passed through immigration that I didnt pass through, not right away. Africa was making her point. The immigration officer waved Papa through, then he waved each Mary by. When it was my turn, he held the wave, studied my passport, studied me. He spoke something unintelligible to his cohort, the only part of which I understood was, A-mar-e-can. He stamped Mamas passport and returned it to her; he tried to wave Mama through before me, but Mama resisted. She is your daughter? the officer said. I felt Mama pulling one way, Africa pulling the other: I was the rope in this tug-of-war. Papa had moved on, having assumed, I suppose, that Mama and I had moved on. I could see him following the Marys in the distance, making his way along a narrow halland Id become Alice in Wonderland, unable to follow this White Rabbit. Were the locks too large or the key too small? Of course, Mama said. Of course shes my daughter. Is this your mother? the officer said to me.

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum Yes, I said, but what would I have said if hed asked me about Papa, whether Papa was my father? What is your name? Yllis. Amaryllis, Mama said. Yllis is her nickname. Is it true? he said to me. Are you A-mary-lis Slee-py? For a moment I felt I had the power to be the shed light, or not. I was no more a Slepy than I was Papas mother, Mary Ann. Yet are you Amaryllis? I felt Africa asking me. Are you truly the shed light? Or are you just the shadow, cast by those around you? But Mama took the power. Of course its true. Once again the officer spoke to his companion, with what I knew were words with meaning, but to me they were meaningless. What is he saying, Mama? Shhh, Yllis. I knew then, when I looked into Mamas golden eyes, that she, too, sensed Africa wanted me, and she was scared. My friend thinks perhaps you could prove this to me. The officer rubbed his palms together. A little something from A-mar-e-ca might prove this to me. Mama shifted from scared to skilled. She rifled through her purse, through her wallet. She dislodged a bill, tucked it into her passport and handed her passport back to the officer. He opened the passport, as if checking it afresh, then he folded the note into his fist. Go, the officer said. He stamped my passport, gave me the wave, but it was a different wave than hed given my sisters and Papa. This wave had meaning I could understand, unlike his words. You dont belong with them, it said, but Im leasing you out. And I thought, Mamas fit the key into the lock, but have I shrunk, or has the door grown? Is this stamped passport the little bottle with the label drink me? Am I shutting up like Alices telescope? And what of the key? Is it again lying on the table but now out of reach? Is there no going back? It was your name, Mama said when we were free of the officers hearing. Thats all it was, you know? Its why he stopped you. The other girls are all named Mary. Youre not. He was trying to make sense of that. I was trying to make sense of that. Sometimes people kidnap children, Mama said. These people who work in immigration, theyre trained to look for things like that, things that could indicate something fishys going on. As if I hadnt seen Mama give him the money, as if I didnt know something fishy was going on. And the word kidnap, it hit me. I wasnt adopted so much as I was kidnapped. Nobody had ever asked me what I wanted. My silent tears started then as Mama and I journeyed through the paint-peeling hall. Soon enough Id be swimming in the Pool of Tears. And soon enough wed meet the King and Queen of Hearts and the whole pack of cards. There are no damn signs, Papa said after Mama and I had caught up and wed collected our bags and Lint. Where the hell are we supposed to go? And what did I do with those damn disembarkation cards, or whatever the hell theyre called?

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum Papa looked from Mary to Mary to Mary to me, as if one of us had absconded with the cards. None of us was accustomed to Papa swearing. Usually his words didnt match his rage. Youre holding the cards, Dick, Mama said. Arent those the cards you have? Papa looked at his hand. Why would they make these cards so ridiculous, so confusing? he said, as if the cards content had something to do with his not being able to find them in his own hand. We go over there, I think. Mama pointed toward several men dressed like soldiers, each of whom rummaged through bystanders bags. That must be customs. What are they looking for? Grace said as we approached the rummaging. Are they gonna look through our stuff like that? But no one answered hernot even Tessa, who under most circumstances had something to say. Not one of us spoke again until a third officer looked through Papas bag, and then Papa asked Graces question himself. What on earth are you looking for? Welcome! the officer said in response. Or not in response. Ive heard that phrase, smiling from ear to ear, but Id never until that moment seen someone do it. And perhaps the officer wasnt doing itperhaps it was an illusion caused by the bright white of his teeth against the darkness of his skin. Or perhaps it was his humming I heard, his joy, a joy that seemed misplaced in the moment. Go in that direction. The officer pointed, then he zipped up Papas bag. Were supposed to meet a driver. Papas eyes darted from his bag to that direction to his bag. Somewhere here theres supposed to be a driver. Go in that direction, the officer said again. Id never seen so many people. The number of people waiting outside the airport far outweighed the number within, at least twenty to one. You need security? one man said as we pressed through the throng. I give you security for small fee. Mary Catherine squeezed her barely there self between Mama and me. What are all those people waiting for? What do they want? What do they want? Again I was Alice: all relativity seemed out of whack. My eyes saw squalor, my eyes expected to see want: envys dust, melancholys shimmer. If people are poor, doesnt that mean their life is hard? Doesnt that mean they want? In the world I knew, poverty and envy went hand in hand. The kids in the free lunch line at school were embarrassed and envious, and sad, tooId seen their shimmery dust. Id wanted to switch places in line just to give them some reprieve from those feelings. Compared to most of those surrounding us at the airport, the free lunch kids seemed rich. So where was envys dust? Where was melancholys shimmer? Bathing us Slepys, thats where. We were all dust and shimmer and fears cotton candy smell, and those eyeing us seemed interested and amused and happy to see us. Welcome! person after person after person said. And they meant it. They did. I heard their hum. Stay close, Papa said, as if we had a choice. We were surrounded by people on all sides. Lint, released from his crate just moments before, had nearly urinated on my feet, as there was nowhere else to go. We werent sardines so much as we were popcorn kernels

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum sizzling in hot oil, pressed kernel to kernel to kernel. We could only sizzle this way for so long before one of us cracked.

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION In a West African village, Seena Slepy stands trial for the murder of her husband, Dick, a doctor who brought his family from their home in the United States to do humanitarian work. How Seena got to this crossroads, with her fate hanging in the balance, is told in a series of flashbacks. Richly atmospheric, Amaryllis in Blueberry is a stirring, soulful novel about the intricacies of human relationships and the haunting nature of secrecy. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Amaryllis in Blueberry is told from the viewpoints of Seena, Dick, their four daughters, their neighbor Clara, and finally the priest Heimdall. How do the varied perspectives affect you as a reader? The final chapter is the only one told from Heimdall Amadis perspective. Why do you suppose the author chose to give him the last word? 2. Consider how truth and reality are portrayed in the novel. What besides individual perspective contributes to each characters view of truth and reality? 3. What are your thoughts on the narrative structure of the novel, which begins with The EndSeena on trial for murderand intertwines scenes from the past and present? How does knowing about Dicks death at the beginning of the novel affect your perception of him throughout the book? How does it affect your view of the other characters, particularly Seena and Yllis? If the story had been told in a more linear fashion, do you think you would have felt differently about the story and/or the characters? 4. Consider the significance of storytelling and mythmaking in the novel. The author interweaves Greek mythology, African mythology, and Catholic doctrine into the story line of Amaryllis in Blueberry. How are these myths/faiths similar? What purpose do they serve? How does religion relate to storytelling and myth making in the novel? 5. The title refers to a Greek myththe myth of Amaryllis. What parallels do you see between the myth of Amaryllis and Ylliss story? In chapter two, Seena explains the myth of Pandora. What parallels do you see between the myth of Pandora and the novels characters, story and structure? 6. Yllis is the only character who tells her story in past tense. Why do you think the author chose to give Yllis this unique perspective? Although Dick, Seena, the Marys, Clara, and Heimdall all tell their stories in the present tense, each looks back on past events. How do you think their present circumstances impact their memory of those past events? How does their memory of these events impact their sense of the present?

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum 7. Discuss the role of religion in the novel. What drives Dicks strong Catholic faith, including his affinity for the Virgin Mary? Mary Catherine says, seeing God, believing in Jesus, is like believing in air. How does Mary Catherine use religion to construct her identity? How does Dick? How do their experiences in Africa challenge their self- perceptions? 8. Compare the two different settings portrayed in the novel, Michigan and West Africa. For the various members of the Slepy family, how are their expectations of Africa different from the reality they encounter? How does each setting affect the way each character constructs his/her sense of identity and reality? 9. What role does names and naming play in the novel? Yllis in not a Mary. Tessa, Grace and Catie all share the name Mary. Seena does not use her given name, Christina except when Dick insists on calling her Christina. Each of the girls receives a West African day name. Mawulis name has meaning. Addaes name has meaning. Are the characters empowered by their names? Confined? Do any of the characters use naming either to empower or to disempower others? 10. How can you live with someone for years . . . and see only your imagination reflected? wonders Seena. Seenas comment suggests she came to realize her perception of Dick was built on imaginationon myth. Was it? Seena claims she never loved Dick, but do you think she did? Does he love her? To what degree are Heimdall, Seenas daughters, and Clara also Seenas imagination reflected? What role does imagination play in the formation, nourishment and/or undermining of the other relationships in the novel? 11. Is the Day of the Snake a turning point in the life of each of the Slepys? Seena seems to think it may be, but is Seenas perception of the announcements significance fueled by her own needs? Is this another moment when Seena sees only her imagination reflected? Do you think a single statement can have the power to irrevocably alter the course of peoples lives? 12. Obsession affects several of the characters in Amaryllis in Blueberry. Why is Dick obsessed with Seena? Why does Seena become Seena the Stalker? Is Mawuli merely a replacement for Mary Catherines lost obsession, her faith? How important is the theme of secrecy in the novel, and why? 13. What are Seenas strengths and weaknesses as a mother? How does your perception of her as a mother affect your view of her as a person? How does each of her children see her? In what ways is Seenas relationship with Yllis different from her relationship with her other daughters? 14. What are Dicks strengths and weaknesses as a father? As a husband? As a human being?

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum 15. What is the significance of Yllis being a synesthete? In a sense, her gift results in her carrying the sins of the world, given she is the recipient of others unspoken confessions. And in the end, it is she who sacrifices her innocence to save her mother. Do you think the author intended to make a parallel between Yllis and Father Amadi? Yllis and Christ? What other metaphors or symbolism do you detect in the novel? 16. Grace isnt the same. That Dipo meant something to her. Standing before all those people, stripped inside and out, she found something inside herself she forgot she had. What reaction did you have to the Dipo ceremony? Do you think it has redeeming cultural value? Why do you think it is important to Grace? Does the Dipo ceremony make you reflect at all on our own cultural practices related to puberty and youth coming-of-age? 17. Why do you think Mary Catherine is drawn to Father Amadi? Why do you think she cuts herself and starves herself? Is it merely a plea for attention, as Seena suggests at one point? Is it possible Mary Catherine knows more about the relationship between Father Amadi and Seena than she is able to admit? 18. Tessas family regards her as a troublemaker, and even Yllis says Tessa is good at sick. And cruel. Yet in many respects, Tessa is more sensitive to and affected by both the joys and sorrows of life in Africa than anyone else in her family. How is this seeming sensitivity consistent with her familys perception of her? How it consistent with her perception of herself? 19. What role does Clara play in the novel? She is not part of the Slepy family, yet she still has a voice in the novel. Why? 20. Now that you know the novels endingthat Yllis killed Dickwhat new insights does it give you into the story and the characters, particularly Yllis? Would your foreknowledge of this and other eventsparticularly the true circumstances of Ylliss birth and Mary Catherines meeting with Father Amadihave altered your perception of the events themselves? How do you think a second reading of this novel would affect you? ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB 1. Visiting the slave castles along the West African coast has an emotional impact on some of the characters in Amaryllis in Blueberry. Further information about the slave castles can be found at http://www.lasentinel.net/African-Slave-Castles.html. 2. Synesthesia is a rare sensory condition that affects Yllis. Find out more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia.

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum 3. Prepare a feast with recipes from The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent by Jessica B. Harris, or check out the selections at www.epicurious.com/recipesmenus/global/african/recipes. A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINA MELDRUM Amaryllis in Blueberry takes place in Michigan and West Africa. What personal significance do these landscapes have for you? What appealed to you about using two such dramatically different locations in the novel? I grew up in Michigan and continue to spend time there every summer. Although I no longer live in Michigan year-round, it will always be home to me at some level. Michigan represents family to me. It represents summers on the lake. It represents holidays. While the characters in Amaryllis in Blueberry are purely fictional, the Danish Landing is very real. My family has owned property on the Danish Landing for over a hundred years. Nearly all of my most poignant childhood memories took place on the Danish Landing. I remember my grandmother standing at the stove flipping blueberry pancakes. I remember exploring the Old Trail. The Danish Landing gave me my first campfire, my first sunburn, my first leech! To the degree any place on earth makes me feel grounded, the Danish Landing does. I imagine Yllis would find part of my soul on the Danish Landing. And I imagine shed find another part of my soul in West Africa. I worked for a short time in West Africa during my twenties, and I continue to have ties to West Africa through my nonprofit work. To the degree the Danish Landing is my place of peace, West Africa is my place of prodding. West Africa nudges me, with its energy and rituals, its colors and smells. As a twenty-something living in West Africa, I did not feel peaceful, but I sure felt alive. I did not feel grounded; I felt flung from Addaes slingshot. And when I landed, I had a different perspective, one that was far more nuanced. I was drawn to writing about these two places because on the surface they are so very different, but beneath the surface of each, theres another world. And these beneath-the-surface worlds are surprisingand surprisingly similar in many ways. Why did you decide to begin the narrative with The End, rather than have the story unfold along a more linear time line? I find perspective fascinating. What if we could begin at The End? Or what if we could take the knowledge of The End and revisit our lives? Would we see ourselves differently? Would we see our lives differently? Would we become different people altogetherare we merely the sum of our choices? Or are we who we are at our core, indelible at some level no matter our choices? Would Seena or Yllis, Tessa or Mary Catherine, Grace or Dick or Clara or Heimdall be the same person to the reader if I had started at the beginning and moved straight to the end? Or did each become a different person to the reader because the reader had foreknowledge of certain outcomes? Did the readers altered perspective change each character in some fundamental way? I dont know the answer to any of these questions, but I think the questions are worth

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum asking, worth exploring. Seena is fascinated by mythology, and even the novels title draws on a Greek myth. Is this a topic in which you had an interest prior to writing Amaryllis in Blueberry? Ive wonderedand continue to wonderwhether each of our lives is a story at some level: a myth we create. How is our sense of reality and identity influenced by our memory, by our perspective, by our reflection on past events? Seena was a person who struggled with her own life story, because it was a painful life story in many respects. Was she drawn to mythology because others stories were safer for her, more palatable to her? Perhaps, but how accurate was her perception of her own life? Was the love she shared with Dick a mere myth, as she came to believe? Was the love she shared with Heimdall a myth as well? Or was it her spinning of these experiences the myths-in-making? And what of Yllis? Her entire lifes story was built on myth: the myth of the blueberry field; the myth of Amaryllis. Yet Yllis was a person who saw beyond myth, whether she wanted to or not. No matter the myths people created for themselvesand of themselvesYllis sensed feeling; she could see beyond peoples words. Still, truth ultimately evaded even Yllis. Was Yllis right, then, that truth is necessarily elusive, that it cant be contained in a jar? Are myths essential to our understanding of ourselves and our world? Personally, I think they may be. I am an emotional synesthete. For synesthetes like me, the world is a layer cake of emotion, and we are its consumers, says Yllis. What prompted the idea to have a character in the story be a synesthete? I remember being a little girl and wondering whether other peoples experience of color matched my own. How do I know, I wondered whether my blue is someone elses red, someone elses magenta? Perhaps my neighbor sees evergreens as ever-purple, meaning my sense of normal would be utterly abnormal to my purple-tree-seeing neighbor. How would we ever know? As I grew and learned more about the power of our brains to filter information perceived by our senses, I became increasingly interested in the impact of perspective on our understanding of truth, which led to my fascination with synesthesia. That said, Yllis was a character with a mind of her own from the get-go. I personally did not know about emotional synesthesia until meeting Yllis, truly. Emotional synesthesia is a form of synesthesia that does exist. But Yllis led me to it as I came to know her as a characternot the other way around. The scenes where Mary Grace participates in the ritual of Dipo are intriguing, particularly the reactions of the American characters to something so unfamiliar. What more can you tell us about Dipo? Dipo is a Krobo ceremony, although some form of Dipo exists in many ethnic groups in West Africa. It is a ceremonial rite of passage, ostensibly to prepare girls for the responsibilities of sexual maturity and eventual marriage. As a student of religion in college, I learned that similar ritualsrituals that celebrate young peoples passage into adulthoodexist in many cultures. Why? What is gained from such ceremonies? Is there an underbelly to such practices, a dark

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum side? I included Dipoand Graces participation in the ceremonyin Amaryllis in Blueberry, in part to consider these questions, but also in hopes Graces experience of Dipo might spur some thinking about our own culture as well. Graces family was troubled by Grace being parade[d] . . . like merchandise. But how do we as a culture express value for girls as they develop into women? How do we guide girls? What traditions and ceremonies celebrate and prepare young womenand young menin our culture for sexual maturity and adulthood? What are the upsides of our own traditionsor lack thereof? What is our dark side? Ive wondered about these questions, in part because girlsand to a lesser extent boysin our culture often seem to lose themselves at some level when they reach puberty. I certainly did. Is this because I was unprepared for this stage in my life? Is it because I suddenly felt less like a whole person, more like an object, as a result of the cultural messages I received? When Dick saw Grace in the Dipo ceremony, he noted she had a body that reminded him of the girls in the girly magazines and he was enraged his daughter was being displayed like merchandise. Yet he regarded his looking at the girly magazines as a victimless act. A ceremony like Dipo may seem troubling at first blushand there are aspects of the ceremony that I continue to find troublingbut I think people tend to be particularly sensitive to and critical of such practices in part because they are foreign. Our own cultural practices may be equally troubling, but because they are familiar, were more accepting of them. I do believe there may be something for us to learn from rituals such as Dipo. Although certain subsets of our society do provide rites of passage to celebrate, honor and prepare youth for adulthood, on the whole the cultural messages teens in our society receive seem at best confusing. The slave castles visited by the Slepy family on their journey in West Africa are a haunting aspect of the novel. Why did you choose to include them as a setting in the story? There is a line in Amaryllis in Blueberry in which Yllis refers to the painful, beautiful truths that hover about like gnats . . . so often we just swat them away. To me, slavery is one of those painful truths we often swat away. It is part of West Africas past. It is part of our past. But slavery is not the past. Like Yllis would say: the slave souls live on; slavery lives on. Be they trokosi or victims of the sex trade or the drug trade or the disfigured girl on the cover of Time magazine who tried to escape her Taliban owner, girls and boys and women all over the world are enslaved every day. The slave castles are a reminder of that. Theyre the gnats. Theyre the decapitated rattler. Like Yllis would say: [T]here is a painful sort of beauty in seeing things for what they really are. In that regard, the slave castles are symbolic of a related issue: how was each character in Amaryllis in Blueberry enslaved at some level: by others perceptions, expectations and memories of him/her; by the characters memories and self- perception; by others choices; or by the confines of his/her culture? How and to what degree is each of us similarly enslaved? What was the most challenging aspect of writing Amaryllis in Blueberry? How was the experience different from that of your young adult novel, Madapple? With both Madapple and Amaryllis in Blueberry, ideas spurred my writing at the outset, more

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum than plot or character did. When I began Amaryllis in Blueberry, I was interested in exploring the way myth and perspective help shape humans sense of reality and identity. I wanted to embed my own story in a myththe myth of Pandoraand allow that myth to help shape the reality and identities I created. At the same time, I wanted to tell my own story from many perspectives: past and present, first person and third person, eight characters, starting with the end, ending with a voice that until that point had had no voice. I was trying to do a lot with ideas and structure, and at first my characters seemed lost in those ideas and structure. It took my having a terrific editor and agent and some wonderful reader friends who directed me back to my characters. With their help, I really came to know my characters, but it was tough, because there were a lot of them. Unlike with Madapple, which I told mainly in first person from the perspective of one character, in Amaryllis in Blueberry I had to know all eight characters intimately. In order to do this, I realized I needed to write them all in first person, then shift their voices (all but Yllis) back to third person. This was time-consuming and challenging, but it helped tremendously. Amaryllis in Blueberry and Madapple both have a character that is put on trial. Did your background as an attorney come into play in deciding to include these scenes? How is Seenas trial most different from one that would take place in the U.S.? I am interested in justice: What is it? How do we decide? Is justice independent of culture? Or is there some fundamental form of justice that exists irrespective of culture? The trials in both of my books were means by which I hoped to explore these questions. Seenas trial in Africa was dramatically different from the trial in Madapple, where Aslaug was said to be innocent until proven guilty. And yet, was it really that different? Of course, in some fundamental respects the trials were night and day. As Seena said, Okomfo and Queen Mother were her accusers, judge and jury. But as the trial in Madapple suggests, our system of litigation, with its lawyers, judges and juries, does not necessarily arrive at truth in the endany more than did Okomfo and Queen Mother. Cultural assumptions and prejudices played a role in both trials. Hence, the question: particularly with regard to the rights of any subset of society, be it women or the disabled or a particular ethnic group, should cultural norms be relevant to determinations of what is just and unjust? The more time I spent thinking about these issues, the less obvious the answers became to me. Hence, I stopped practicing law. And started writing. Did you intend from the start to have religion be a key theme in the novel, or is it an aspect of the story line that developed during the writing process? I see religion less as a theme in Amaryllis in Blueberry, more as a vehicle by which I explored other themes, particularly truth and the corresponding power of perspective. Similar to the role of Greek mythology and African mythologyand mythmaking in generalreligion was a means by which certain characters in the novel made sense of their world and of themselves. Because of this, religion provided an avenue to explore other themes in the novel, including justice, contrition, and obsession. In these respects, I did intend from the outset to have religion play a key role.

Amaryllis in Blueberry, by Christina Meldrum Against Seenas wishes, Dick insists on calling her by her given name, Christina. Is it a coincidence that you share a name with one of the characters in the story? Do you have a nickname? Ive often wondered about the power of names and naming: Can we be confined by the names we are given? Or do names have the power to empower? Names are extremely important in West Africa. Every child is named according to the day of his or her birth. And people often have additional names with meaning, as did both Mawuli and Addae. How powerful are these names in shaping each person? Comparatively, how powerful was Ylliss name, and the Marys names and Seenas name in shaping each of them? Yllis is not a Mary. How did that affect the way she viewed herself ? How did being a Mary affect Grace, Catie, and Tessa? Seena talks about her name as a gift given to her by her mother, yet the loss of her mother was a yoke around Seenas neck her entire lifelike the pearls. Did Seenas name empower or disempower her? When Dick insists on calling Seena Christina, what might be his intention, subconsciously or consciously? To control Seena? To own her? To give her Christ within, make her into a religious person? To the degree names are important in the story, it is for these reasons, not because I share a name with one of the characters. That said, I did grow up with a nickname (not Seena!), as did most everyone in my family. And perhaps that nicknaming spurred my interest in the power of names.

THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY

Richard C. Morais
Scribner Paperback: 9781439165652 eBook: 9781439165669

This delicious fairy-tale-like readis well worth every step of the journey from the kitchens of India to the kitchens of France.
NPR.org, Literary Destinations: Five Books To Help You Escape

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais

Authors Note
Im not sure about you, but I like nothing better than to periodically escape the stresses of modern life with some armchair travel that effortlessly, and at very little cost, whisks me away to a world far from the one I know. That is precisely what I set out to accomplish in my novel, The Hundred-Foot Journey. For a little while at least, I wanted to live in a life-affirming world full of eccentric family members, delicious food, and breathtaking scenery. So please join me and tag alongside the boisterous Haji family as they make their noisy way from Mumbai to London to Lumire, and, finally, Paris. Richard C. Morais

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memory. Richard C. Moraiss memory may make your stomach growl.

When I was eight years old my family rented an elegant if slightly dilapidated villa in the brushy hills of Portugal, very close to Guincho, a beautiful but rough beach on the Atlantic Ocean. I can so clearly remember the day my father and his friend dug a pit in the back of the old villa grounds, filled it with red-hot coals, and then, with the cooks help, spit-roasted a kid, constantly basting the crackling carcass with lemon juice. The sight of my father holding a tumbler of red wine and glowing with happiness as he stirred the red coals; the scents of pine trees, seared meat, and briny sea threading like ribbons through the air; the childhood giddiness that came with the excitement of the event as I and the house dogs ran around and around the turning spitit all lives with me to this day. And it is precisely that which I have tried to capture in my novelfor every memorable meal I have ever had in my life is not just infused with herbs and juices but also with the memory of people dear to me.

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais

Chapter One
I, Hassan Haji, was born, the second of six children, above my grandfathers restaurant on the Napean Sea Road in what was then called West Bombay, two decades before the great city was renamed Mumbai. I suspect my destiny was written from the very start, for my first sensation of life was the smell of machli ka salan, a spicy fish curry, rising through the floorboards to the cot in my parents room above the restaurant. To this day I can recall the sensation of those cot bars pressed up coldly against my toddlers face, my nose poked out as far as possible and searching the air for that aromatic packet of cardamom, fish heads, and palm oil, which, even at that young age, somehow suggested there were unfathomable riches to be discovered and savored in the free world beyond. But let me start at the beginning. In 1934, my grandfather arrived in Bombay from Gujarat, a young man riding to the great city on the roof of a steam engine. These days in India many up-and-coming families have miraculously discovered noble backgroundsfamous relatives who worked with Mahatma Gandhi in the early days in South Africabut I have no such genteel heritage. We were poor Muslims, subsistence farmers from dusty Bhavnagar, and a severe blight among the cotton fields in the 1930s left my starving seventeen-year-old grandfather no choice but to migrate to Bombay, that bustling metropolis where little people have long gone to make their mark. My life in the kitchen, in short, starts way back with my grandfathers great hunger. And that three-day ride atop the train, baking in the fierce sun, clinging for dear life as the hot iron chugged across the plains of India, was the unpromising start of my familys journey. Grandfather never liked to talk about those early days in Bombay, but I know from Ammi, my grandmother, that he slept rough in the streets for many years, earning his living delivering tiffin boxes to the Indian clerks running the back rooms of the British Empire. To understand the Bombay from where I come, you must go to Victoria Terminus at rush hour. It is the very essence of Indian life. Coaches are split between men and women, and commuters literally hang from the windows and doors as the trains ratchet down the rails into the Victoria and Churchgate stations. The trains are so crowded there isnt even room for the commuters lunch boxes, which arrive in separate trains after rush hour. These tiffin boxes over two million battered tin cans with a lidsmelling of daal and gingery cabbage and black pepper rice and sent on by loyal wivesare sorted, stacked into trundle carts, and delivered with utmost precision to each insurance clerk and bank teller throughout Bombay. That was what my grandfather did. He delivered lunch boxes. A dabba-wallah. Nothing more. Nothing less. Grandfather was quite a dour fellow. We called him Bapaji, and I remember him squatting on his haunches in the street near sunset during Ramadan, his face white with hunger and rage as he puffed on a beedi. I can still see the thin nose and iron-wire eyebrows, the soiled skullcap and kurta, his white scraggly beard. Dour he was, but a good provider, too. By the age of twenty-three he was delivering nearly a thousand tiffin boxes a day. Fourteen runners worked for him, their pumping legs wrapped in lungithe poor Indian mans skirttrundling the carts through the congested streets of Bombay as they off-loaded tinned lunches at the Scottish Amicable and Eagle Star buildings.

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais It was 1938, I believe, when he finally summoned Ammi. The two had been married since they were fourteen and she arrived with her cheap bangles on the train from Gujarat, a tiny peasant with oiled black skin. The train station filled with steam, the urchins made toilet on the tracks, and the water boys cried out, a current of tired passengers and porters flowing down the platform. In the back, third-class with her bundles, my Ammi. Grandfather barked something at her and they were off, the loyal village wife trailing several respectful steps behind her Bombay man. It was on the eve of World War II that my grandparents set up a clapboard house in the slums off the Napean Sea Road. Bombay was the back room of the Allies Asian war effort, and soon a million soldiers from around the world were passing through its gates. For many soldiers it was their last moments of peace before the torrid fighting of Burma and the Philippines, and the young men cavorted about Bombays coastal roads, cigarettes hanging from their lips, ogling the prostitutes working Chowpatty Beach. It was my grandmothers idea to sell them snacks, and my grandfather eventually agreed, adding to the tiffin business a string of food stalls on bicycles, mobile snack bars that rushed from the bathing soldiers at Juhu Beach to the Friday evening rush-hour crush outside the Churchgate train station. They sold sweets made of nuts and honey, milky tea, but mostly they sold bhelpuri, a newspaper cone of puffed rice, chutney, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, mint, and coriander, all mixed together and slathered with spices. Delicious, I tell you, and not surprisingly the snack-bicycles became a commercial success. And so, encouraged by their good fortune, my grandparents cleared an abandoned lot on the far side of the Napean Sea Road. It was there that they erected a primitive roadside restaurant. They built a kitchen of three tandoori ovensand a bank of charcoal fires on which rested iron kadais of mutton masalaall under a U.S. Army tent. In the shade of the banyan tree, they also set up some rough tables and slung hammocks. Grandmother employed Bappu, a cook from a village in Kerala, and to her northern repertoire she now added dishes like onion theal and spicy grilled prawns. Soldiers and sailors and airmen washed their hands with English soap in an oil drum, dried themselves on the proffered towel, and then clambered up on the hammocks strung under the shady tree. By then some relatives from Gujarat had joined my grandparents, and these young men were our waiters. They slapped wooden boards, makeshift tables, across the hammocks and quickly covered them with bowls of skewered chicken and basmati and sweets made from butter and honey. During slow moments Grandmother wandered out in the long shirt and trousers we call a salwar kameez, threading her way between the sagging hammocks and chatting with the homesick soldiers missing the dishes of their own countries. What you like to eat? shed ask. What you eat at home? And the British soldiers told her about steak-and-kidney pies, of the steam that arose when the knife first plunged into the crust and revealed the pies lumpy viscera. Each soldier tried to outdo the other, and soon the tent filled with oohing and cors and excited palaver. And the Americans, not wishing to be outdone by the British, joined in, earnestly searching for the words that could describe a grilled steak coming from cattle fed on Florida swamp grass. And so, armed with this intelligence she picked up in her walkabouts, Ammi retreated to the kitchen, re-creating in her tandoori oven interpretations of what she had heard. There was,

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais for example, a kind of Indian bread-and-butter pudding, dusted with fresh nutmeg, that became a hit with the British soldiers; the Americans, she found, they were partial to peanut sauce and mango chutney folded in between a piece of naan. And so it wasnt long before news of our kitchen spread from Gurkha to British soldier, from barracks to warship, and all day long jeeps stopped outside our Napean Sea Road tent. Ammi was quite remarkable and I cannot give her enough credit for what became of me. There is no dish finer than her pearlspot, a fish she dusted in a sweet-chili masala, wrapped in a banana leaf, and tawa-grilled with a spot of coconut oil. It is for me, well, the very height of Indian culture and civilization, both robust and refined, and everything that I have ever cooked since is held up against this benchmark, my grandmothers favorite dish. And she had that amazing capacity of the professional chef to perform several tasks at once. I grew up watching her tiny figure darting barefoot across the earthen kitchen floor, quickly dipping eggplant slices in chickpea flour and frying them in the kadai, cuffing a cook, passing me an almond wafer, screeching her disapproval at my aunt. The point of all this, however, is Ammis roadside tent quickly established itself as a cash cow and suddenly my grandparents were doing extremely well, the small fortune they amassed, the hard-currency residue of a million soldiers and sailors and airmen moving in and out of Bombay. And with this came the problems of success. Bapaji was notoriously tightfisted. He was always yelling at us for the smallest thing, such as dabbing too much oil on the tawa grill. Really a bit mad for money. So, suspicious of the neighbors and our Gujarati relatives, Bapaji began hiding his savings in coffee tins, and every Sunday he traveled to a secret spot in the country where he buried his precious lucre in the ground. My grandparents break came in the fall of 1942 when the British administration, needing cash for the war effort, auctioned off tracts of Bombay real estate. Most of the property was in Salsette, the larger island on which Bombay was built, but awkward strips of land and vacant lots of Colaba were also disposed of. Among the land to be sold: the abandoned Napean Sea Road property on which my family was squatting. Bapaji was essentially a peasant and like all peasants he respected land more than paper money. So one day he dug up all his hidden tins and went, with a literate neighbor at his side, to the Standard Chartered Bank. With the banks help, Bapaji bought the four-acre plot on the Napean Sea Road, paying at auction 1,016 English pounds, 10 shillings, and 8 pence for land at the foot of Malabar Hill. Then, and only then, my grandparents were blessed with children. Midwives delivered my father, Abbas Haji, the night of the famous wartime ammunition explosion at the Bombay Docks. The evening sky exploded with balls of fire, great eruptions shattering windows far across the city, and it was at that precise moment my grandmother let out a bloodcurdling scream and Papa popped out, yelling louder even than the explosions and his mother. We all laughed at this story, the way Ammi told it, for anyone who knew my father would agree it was a most appropriate backdrop to his arrival. Auntie, born two years later, arrived under much calmer circumstances. Independence and Partition came and went. What precisely happened to the family during that infamous time remains a mystery; none of the questions we asked Papa were ever given a straight answer. Oh, you know, it was bad, he would say, when pressed.

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais But we managed. Now stop with the police interrogation. Go get me my newspaper. We do know that my fathers family, like many others, was split in two. Most of our relatives fled to Pakistan, but Bapaji stayed in Mumbai and hid his family in a Hindi business associates warehouse basement. Ammi once told me they slept by day, because at night they were kept awake by the screams and throat-slitting taking place just outside the basements door. The point is Papa grew up in an India very different from the one his father knew. Grandfather was illiterate; Papa attended a local school, not very good, admittedly, but he still made it to the Institute of Catering Technology, a polytechnic in Ahmedabad. Education makes the old tribal ways quite impossible, of course, and it was in Ahmedabad that Papa met Tahira, a light-skinned accounting student who would become my mother. Papa says he first fell in love with her smell. His head was down in a library book when he caught the most intoxicating whiff of chapatis and rose water. That, he said, that was my mother. One of my earliest memories is of Papa tightly squeezing my hand as we stood on the Mahatma Gandhi Road, staring in the direction of the fashionable Hyderabad Restaurant. Bombays immensely wealthy Banaji family and their friends were unloading at curb edge from a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. The women squealed and kissed and remarked on one anothers weight; behind them a Sikh doorman snapped open the glass door of the restaurant. Hyderabad and its proprietor, a sort of Indian Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., called Uday Joshi, were frequently in the society pages of the Times of India, and each mention of Joshi made my father curse and rattle the paper. While our own restaurant was not in the same league as Hyderabadwe served good food at fair pricesPapa thought Uday Joshi was his great rival. And here now was this high-society crowd descending on the famous restaurant for a mehndi, a prenuptial tradition in which the bride and her women friends sit plumped on cushions and have their hands, palms, and feet intricately painted with henna. It meant fine food, lively music, spicy gossip. And it most certainly meant more press for Joshi. Look, Papa said suddenly. Gopan Kalam. Papa bit the corner of his mustache as he wetly clapped my hand in his paw. I will never forget his face. It was as if the clouds had suddenly parted and Allah himself stood before us. He a billionaire, Papa whispered. Make his money in petrochemicals and telecommunications. Look, look at that womans emeralds. Aiiee. Size of plums. Right then Uday Joshi emerged from the glass doors and stood among the elegant peach saris and silk Nehru suits as if he were their equal. Four or five newspaper photographers instantly called at him to turn this way and that. Joshi was famously smitten with all things European, and he stood perkily before the clicking cameras in a shiny black Pierre Cardin lounge suit, his capped white teeth flashing in the light. The famous restaurateur commanded my attention, even at that tender age, like a Bollywood screen legend. Joshis throat, I remember, was lusciously wrapped in a yellow silk ascot, and his hair was airily combed back in a silver pompadour, mightily secured with cans of hair spray. I dont think I had ever seen anyone so elegant. Look at him, Papa hissed. Look at that little rooster.

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais Papa could not stand watching Joshi a moment longer, and he turned abruptly, yanking me toward the Suryodhaya Supermarket and its special on ten-gallon vats of vegetable oil. I was just eight and had to run to keep up with his long strides and flapping kurta. Listen to me, Hassan, he roared over the traffic. One day the Haji name will be known far and wide, and no one will remember that rooster. Just you wait and see. Ask the people then, ask them who Uday Joshi is. Who he? they say. But Haji? Haji, they say, Haji are very distinguished, very important family. In short, Papa was a man of large appetites. He was fat but tall for an Indian, just six feet. Chubby-faced, with curly iron hair and a thick waxed mustache. And he was always dressed the old way, a kurta, over trousers. But he was not what you would call refined. Papa ate, like all Muslim men, with his handshis right hand, that is, the left resting on his lap. But instead of the decorous lifting of food to his lips, Papa stuck his head down in the plate and shoveled fatty mutton and rice into his face as if hed never get another meal. And he sweated buckets while he ate, wet spots the size of dinner plates appearing under his arms. When he finally lifted his face from the food, he had the glassy-eyed look of a drunk, his chin and cheeks slicked with orange grease. I loved him but even I must agree it was a frightful sight. After dinner Papa hobbled over to the couch, collapsed, and for the next half hour fanned himself and let everyone else in on his general satisfaction with loud belches and thunderous farts. My mother, coming from her respectable civil servant family in Delhi, closed her eyes with disgust at this after-dinner ritual. And she was always on him while he was eating. Abbas, shed say. Slow down. Youll choke. Good heavens. Like eating with a donkey. But you had to admire Papa, the charisma and determination behind his immense drive. By the time I came along in 1975, he was firmly in control of the family restaurant, my grandfather ailing from emphysema and largely confined, on his good days, to overseeing the tiffin delivery business from a stiff-backed chair in the courtyard. Ammis tent was retired for a gray concrete-and-brick compound. My family lived on the second floor of the main house, above our restaurant. My grandparents and childless aunt and uncle lived in the house one over, and down from them our family enclave was sealed off with a cube of wooden two-story shacks where our Kerala cook, Bappu, and the other servants slept on the floor. It was the courtyard that was the heart and soul of the old family business. Tiffin carts and bicycle-snack-bars were stacked against the far wall, and under the shade of the saggy tarp were cauldrons of carp-head soup, stacks of banana leaves, and freshly made samosas on wax paper. The great iron vats of flecked rice, perfumed with bay leaf and cardamom, stood against the courtyards opposite wall, and around these delicacies hummed a constant thrum of flies. A male servant usually sat on a canvas sack at the kitchens back door, carefully picking out the black specks of dirt among the basmati kernels; and an oily-headed female, bent at the waist with her sari gathered between her legs, was brushing with a short broom the courtyard dirt, back and forth, back and forth. And I recall our yard as always full of life, filled with constant comings and goings that made the roosters and chickens jerk about, nervously clucking in the shadows of my childhood.

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais It was here, in the heat of the afternoon after school, that I would find Ammi working under the porch eaves overhanging the interior courtyard. Id scramble atop a crate for a hot- faced sniff of her spicy fish soup, and wed chat a bit about my day at school before she passed over to me the stirring of the cauldron. And I remember her gracefully gathering up the hem of her sari, retreating to the wall where she kept an eye on me as she smoked her iron pipe, a habit she kept from her village days in Gujarat. I remember this as if it were yesterday: stirring and stirring to the citys beat, passing for the very first time into the magic trance that has ever since taken me when I cook. The balmy wind warbled across the courtyard, bringing the faraway yap of Bombay dogs and traffic and the smell of raw sewage into the family compound. Ammi squatted in the shady corner, her tiny wrinkled face disappearing behind contented claps of smoke; and, floating down from above, the girlish voices of my mother and aunt as they folded chickpea and chili into skirts of pastry on the first-floor veranda overhead. But most of all I recall the sound of my iron hoe grating rhythmically across the vessels floor, bringing jewels up from the soup-deep: the bony fish heads and the white eyes rising to the surface on eddies ruby red. I still dream of the place. If you stepped out of the immediate safety of our family compound you stood at the edge of the notorious Napean Sea Road shantytown. It was a sea of roof scraps atop rickety clapboard shacks, all crisscrossed by putrid streams. From the shantytown rose the pungent smells of charcoal fires and rotting garbage, and the hazy air itself was thick with the roar of roosters and bleating goats and the slap-thud of washing beaten on cement slabs. Here, children and adults shat in the streets. But on the other side of us, a different India. As I grew up, so, too, did my country. Malabar Hill, towering above us, quickly filled with cranes as between the old gated villas white high-rises called Miramar and Palm Beach arose. I know not where they came from, but the affluent seemed to suddenly spring like gods from the very ground. Everywhere, the talk was of nothing but mint-fresh software engineers and scrap metal dealers and pashmina exporters and umbrella manufacturers and I know not what else. Millionaires, by the hundreds first, then by the thousands. Once a month Papa paid Malabar Hill a visit. He would put on a fresh-washed kurta and take me by the hand up the hill so we could pay our respects to the powerful politicians. We gingerly made our way to the back doors of vanilla-colored villas, the white-gloved butler wordlessly pointing at a terra-cotta pot just inside the door. Papa dropped his brown paper bag among the heap of other paper bags, the door unceremoniously slammed shut in our face, and we were off with our rupee-stuffed paper bags to the next Bombay Regional Congress Committee official. But there were rules. Never to the front of the house. Always at the back. And then, business done, humming a ghazal under his breath, Papa bought us, on the trip I am remembering, a mango juice and some grilled corn and we sat on a bench in the Hanging Gardens, the public park up on Malabar Hill. From our spot under palm trees and bougainvilleas we could see the comings and goings at Broadway, a spanking-new apartment building across the torrid green: the businessmen climbing into their Mercedes; the children emerging in school uniforms; the wives off for tennis and tea. A steady stream of wealthy

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais Jainssilky robes, hairy chests, gold-rimmed glassesheaded past us to the Jain Mandir, a temple where they washed their idols in sandalwood paste. Papa sank his teeth into the corn and violently mowed his way down the cob, bits of kernel sticking to his mustache and cheeks and hair. Lots of money, he said, smacking his lips and gesturing across the street with the savaged cob. Rich people. A girl and her nanny, on their way to a birthday party, emerged from the apartment building and flagged down a taxi. That girl is in my school. See her in the playground. Papa flung his finished corncob into the bushes and wiped his face with a handkerchief. Is that so? he said. She nice? No. She think she spicy hot. At that moment, I recall, a van pulled up to the apartment buildings doors. It was the fabled restaurateur Uday Joshi, delivering his latest business, home catering, for those distressing times when servants had the day off. An enormous picture of a winking Joshi stared at us from the side of the van, a bubble erupting from his mouth. NO MESS. NO FUSS. WE DO IT FOR YOU, it said. The doorman held open the door as the caterer, in white jacket, bolted from the back of the van with tin trays and lids and foil. And I remember the deep rumble of Papas voice. What Joshi up to now? Father had long ago done away with the old U.S. Army tent, replacing it with a brick house and plastic tables. It was a cavernous hall, simple, boisterous with noise. When I was twelve, however, Papa decided to move upmarket, closer to Joshis Hyderabad Restaurant, and he turned our old restaurant compound into the 365-seat Bollywood Nights. In went a stone fountain. Over the center of the dining room, Papa hung a disco glitter- ball, made of mirrors, revolving over a tiny dance floor. He had the walls painted gold before covering them, just like he had seen in pictures of a Hollywood restaurant, with the signed photographs of Bollywood stars. Then he bribed starlets and their husbands to regularly drop by the restaurant a couple of times a month, and, miraculously, the glossy magazine Hello Bombay! always had a photographer there precisely at the right moment. And on weekends Papa hired singers who were the spitting image of the hugely popular Alka Yagnik and Udit Narayan. So successful was the whole venture that, a few years after Bollywood Nights opened, Papa added a Chinese restaurant to our compound, and a real disco with smoke machines thatmuch to my annoyanceonly my oldest brother, Umar, was allowed to operate. We occupied our entire four acres, the Chinese and Bollywood Nights restaurants seating 568, vibrant businesses catering to Bombays upwardly mobile. The restaurants reverberated with laughter and the thump of the disco, the smell of chilies and roast fish in the air wet and fecund with spilled Kingfisher beer. Papaknown to everyone as Big Abbaswas born for this work, and he waddled around his studio lot all day like some Bollywood producer, yelling orders, slapping up the head slovenly busboys, greeting guests. His foot always on the gas. Come on, come on, was his constant cry. Why so slow, like an old woman?

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais My mother, by contrast, was the much-needed brake, always ready to bring Papa down to earth with a smack of common sense, and I recall her sitting coolly in a cage just upstairs from Bollywood Nights main door, penciling in the accounts from her lofty perch. But above us all, the vultures that fed off the bodies in the Tower of Silence, the Parsi burial grounds up on Malabar Hill. The vultures I remember, too. Always circling and circling and circling.

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION Haji Hassan is born in Mumbai and raised among the spices and flavors of his grandmothers kitchen and his familys restaurant. But his life is changed forever when a tragedy forces his family to leave their home and the familiar chaos of India in search of a fresh start. Thus begins their impetuous journey across Europe, starting in London and ending in the remote French village of Lumire, where they happen to settle down opposite the haughty Madame Mallory a renowned French chef with very specific ideas about taste. Young Hassans mind is opened by Madame Mallory and his encounter with the world of French cuisine. Yet expanding his palate in Lumire is just the beginning of Hassans journey; for in the hundred-foot distance from his familys home to Madame Mallorys restaurant, Hassan finds his destiny. Full of eccentric characters, vivid settings, and delicious meals, The Hundred-Foot Journey recounts the strange and wondrous story of Hassans lifefrom his humble beginnings in the culinary world, fostered on the hectic, curry-scented streets of Mumbai, to his ultimate triumph in the exclusive club of Parisian haute cuisine. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. The title of the novel is The Hundred-Foot Journey. Discuss the title in relation to where Hassan started and where he ends upin both the geographic and the psychological senses. Ultimately, which journey do you feel was more important? To which other characters might the title apply, and in what ways? Even some characters like Madame Mallory who never leave home are somehow transformed through the course of the novel. Discuss how Hassans transformation is different or similar to that of other characters in the book. 2. The Haji family first settles in London before embarking on a whirlwind journey across Europe and eventually settling in Lumire. Discuss Hassans time in London. How did his stay there influence his later life? Why do you think Abbas eventually decided his family needed to move on? 3. After Hassans hands are burned, Madame Mallory, alone in a small chapel, thinks about her life while staring at the chapels fresco: And in the depths of those glinting little eyes she sees the balance sheet of her life, an endless list of credits and debits, of accomplishments and failures, small acts of kindness and real acts of cruelty. Do you see life in the same terms, as a balance sheet of how we act and what we achieve? Do you think her offer to teach Hassan is a true act of kindness, or because she felt she owed the universe a great debt? Or some combination of both?

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais 4. While Hassans father undoubtedly plays an important role in his sons life, Hassan is strongly influenced by the women around him. Consider his grandmother, his mother, Madame Mallory, Margaret, and even his sister Mehtab. What does he learn from each of these women at various points throughout the novel, both in the kitchen and otherwise? 5. Choose one adjective you think best sums up the character of Hassan and share it with the group. Were you surprised by how others in your group perceived him? What are his strengths and his weaknesses? How is your perception of his character altered throughout the story? 6. Madame Mallory says to Hassan, Good taste is not the birthright of snobs, but a gift from God sometimes found in the most unlikely of places and in the unlikeliest people. What do you think about this statement and the particular way she phrases it? 7. Chef Tom Colicchio said that in The Hundred-Foot Journey, food isnt just a theme, its a main character. Do you agree? Discuss the relationships between the characters and the food described in the book. How does this novel illustrate the old adage that you are what you eat? 8. Did Hassans decision to move to Paris, and eventually open a French restaurant, surprise you? Why or why not? Do you feel his experiences in Mumbaiin the kitchen of his familys restaurant and exploring the city with his motherwere influential in his later work? How? 9. It was shortly thereafter, sitting in the bathtub, drinking a tea spiked with garam masala and dripping with sweat, all the while thinking of my father, that the name of the new restaurant suddenly came to me. Look up the meaning of Le Chien Mchant and discuss its significance as the name of Hassans restaurant. Compare it to the other restaurants named in the book, such as Paul Verduns Le Coq dOr, Madame Mallorys Le Saule Pleureur, or even the Hassan familys Maison Mumbai. How much (or how little) can be told about each character from the name of their restaurant? 10. In reworking the menu of Le Chien Mchant, Hassan tells his staff to go back to your hometowns, back to your roots across France . . . Do you think that, until this point, he had forgotten the importance of home and family, of roots and past experiences, in his journey to become the best chef he could be? 11. Later, Hassan walks by a small, hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant in Paris and stands at the window for a while. As he leaves, he reflects, I took one longing last look at Madras . . . leaving behind the intoxicating smells of machli ka salan, an olfactory wisp of who I was, fading fast in the Parisian night. Do you feel this passage is symbolic as well as literal? Did Hassan have to leave behind a part of who he was to keep moving forward? Do you think this was a choice he consciously made? Do you agree with his choice?

The Hundred-Foot Journey, by Richard C. Morais What did Hassan gain and what did he lose in his journey? 12. In the elite world of haute cuisine, what are the costs of rising to the top? Discuss this idea in relation to Madame Mallory and Paul Verdun, and then to Hassan and his family. Do you think the sacrifices were worth the successes? Do you think that all artists are forced to give up something incredibly vital in pursuit of their passions? Did Hassan manage to avoid the trap of his mentors?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB 1. Pick a recipe from the back of The Hundred-Foot Journey or another French or Indian cookbook. In looking for that recipe, how many of the ingredients are familiar to you? How many seem foreign? Can you imagine how the finished dish will look, smell, and taste? If you want, you can prepare the dish. Bring it to your next meeting and discuss your experience cooking it. Was it difficult? Satisfying? Frustrating? Exciting? Would you prepare it again? Does the recipe remind you of a particular scene in the book? 2. Have each member of your book club name their own fictional restaurant. Discuss the names you chose and what their significance is. What kind of food would your restaurant serve? Why? How would your restaurant look and feel? 3. Learn more about Richard C. Morais and his own journey at www.richardcmorais.com. 4. Compare this novel to other novels that share themes of food and self-discovery, such as Under the Tuscan Sun or Eat, Pray, Love. How are they similar? How are they different? If The Hundred-Foot Journey was made into a movie, who would you cast?

THE DISTANT HOURS

Kate Morton
Washington Square Press Paperback: 9781439152799 eBook: 9781439199343

Morton is the master of the atmospheric old-fashioned novel packed with enough stories to fill all the worn satchels in the Milderhurst attic. The Distant Hours is saturated with the sights and sounds of country life during wartime, Blitz-torn London and the ghostly passageways of the decaying castle. Fans of Morton and new readers alike will be delighted to uncover the truth of what happened in the distant hours of the past.
BookPage

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton

Authors Note
The Distant Hours begins with Edie Burchilll, a young woman whos visiting her parents for lunch when a mysterious letter, lost for fifty years, drops through the mail slot. Edies mother breaks down upon reading who its fromJuniper Blythe, of Milderhurst Castle. And so, a mystery is sparked. Edie determines to learn the truth about her mothers secret past, and is drawn into the war-time world of the three Blythe sisters, elderly spinsters now, and living together still in the crumbling castle in which they were born and raised by their father, Raymond Blythe, author of the childrens gothic classic, The True History of the Mud Man. I was a third of the way into writing a different story when the sisters Blythe started whispering in my ear. I tried to ignore them but they were insistent and eventually I agreed to give them one week. I set aside my other projecttemporarilyin the hopes that the sisters would that way be appeased, that I might silence them and convince them that they had to wait till next time. I wrote the first chapter of The Distant Hours, in which the lost letter arrives and Edie learns the name Juniper Blythe in a single night, and by the time I went to bed, I knew I wouldnt be returning to the other project. I couldnt. It was clear to me that this was the story I had to tell. That happens sometimes and Ive learned that its best not to ask questions but rather just to hold on tight and follow the story where it leads. The Distant Hours was a labor of love. I wrote intensively, coming up for air occasionally before disappearing once more beneath the novels surface. The characters are real and dear to me and the story brought together a number of my favorite things: a crumbling castle, a family of sisters, a love of books and reading, the haunting of the present by the past, thwarted love, ghostly shivers, mystery, memory and secrets. No matter how much I adore writing, though, no matter how much pleasure my stories bring me, it isnt until a book is read that it really starts to breathe. So let me take this opportunity to thank you, because by reading The Distant Hours, youll bring the characters, the past, Milderhurst Castle itself, back to life. Kate Morton

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memory. Kate Morton shares her first fairytale white Christmas.
All week it had been bitterly cold. Rugged-up Londoners scurried along the Kings Road, children disappeared inside mufflers and knitted hats, and queues for hot chocolates snaked through caf doors towards the cold, grey street. Eager weather forecasters, cheeks aglow in their centrally heated TV studios, first hinted at, then promised, snow before years end. For a bunch of Australians intent on a fairytale white Christmas, the anticipation was almost too much to bear. It was December 2005 and my entire familyparents, sisters, brother-in-law, husband and two- year-old son, Oliverwas in the UK. The trip had been a year in the planning, the logistics of coordinating so many people with disparate lives and responsibilities no mean feat. It had been a year of family highs and lows, and the holiday had been in jeopardy several times, but here we were. After a fortnight in London, we were ready to pack ourselves into a hire car and embrace the English country Christmas wed so long sought. The village had been chosen through a process of exhaustive (and exhausting) dreaming. After much spirited debate, the Cotswolds, the Lake District and Yorkshire had been abandoned in favor of Lavenham, in south-west Suffolk. It was a medieval wool town, the brochures said, and glossy pictures boasted half-timbered houses that sagged together, as they had done for hundreds of years, unspoiled meadows that unrolled towards the horizon and a French restaurant folks travelled from far and wide to dine at. So it was, on Christmas Eve, we waved London goodbye and motored east through the stark, wintry countryside. Two hours later, as the lingering dusk sighed upon the hilltops, we left the arterial road and followed increasingly humble signs into Lavenham. The village was that of a thousand rural fantasies. We headed through narrow cobbled lanes, across the medieval marketplace, until finally, we reached a pair of whitewashed cottages. They had been waiting for us, fruit-laden wreaths blushing on their shiny doors. Timber-beamed bedroom lofts were claimed, fires were set, the complimentary basket of pantry goodies exclaimed over, before finally, we decided there was sufficient light left in the day to explore the village. As evening fell and Christmas lights began to twinkle, the village was aflutter with whispers of snow on the breeze. Old-timers, who surely knew such things, nodded sagely and declared thered be a dusting before night was out. We crossed our cold fingers, but didnt dare hope wed be so lucky. Yet still we watched with anticipation as the clouds gathered.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton That night, after carols in the 15th-century church, hot chocolates by the fire and plenty of surreptitious glances through the window, we hung a stocking for Oliver (who was full of concerned questions as to how Santa would find him when he wasnt at home) and headed to bed. As we snuggled beneath thick down doonas and frost scribbled lacy patterns on the glass outside, each of us listened hopefully for the gentle sound of flakes kissing the panes. Oliver woke us next morning, clambering across the bedclothes, waving the letter Santa had left in place of rum and a mince pie. It was still dark outside, he added as an afterthought, but everything was all white. We raced to the window and threw back the curtains. In the pre-dawn glow, I could just make out the fine veil of snow cloaking the village. It was magical. Of course, we threw on coats and leaped outside to toss snowballs scraped together from the meager dusting, snap photos of the frozen Manor House lake and fashion ourselves a snowman. So intent were we that no one noticed the wind change. It was instant. One moment the air was clear, the next, all was obscured by whitesnow like none wed seen before or since. Great tissue-torn flakes, tossed from on high, coating the meadow sheep and catching on our hair, our gloves, our noses. Within minutes, the land was blanketed. We hurried on, into the churchyard. The church bells began to ring, carols drifted from the service within and we all stood, cheeks red with frost, beaming at one another. There were no words necessary. My entire family, happy and healthy, together for Christmas, my little boy gazing wondrously at the snowflakes, the peal of ancient bells and the promise of a hot festive lunch. For what more could we wish?
Reprinted by permission of The Australian Womens Weekly. Christmas in England or An English Christmas.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton

A Lost Letter Finds Its Way * 1992

It started with a letter. A letter that had been lost a long time, waiting out half a century in a forgotten postal bag in the dim attic of a nondescript house in Bermondsey. I think about it sometimes, that mailbag: of the hundreds of love letters, grocery bills, birthday cards, notes from children to their parents, that lay together, swelling and sighing as their thwarted messages whispered in the dark. Waiting, waiting, for someone to realize they were there. For it is said, you know, that a letter will always seek a reader; that sooner or later, like it or not, words have a way of finding the light, of making their secrets known. Forgive me, Im being romantica habit acquired from the years spent reading nineteenth-century novels with a torch when my parents thought I was asleep. What I mean to say is that its odd to think that if Arthur Tyrell had been a little more responsible, if he hadnt had one too many rum toddies that Christmas Eve in 1941 and gone home and fallen into a drunken slumber instead of finishing his mail delivery, if the bag hadnt then been tucked in his attic and hidden until his death some fifty years later when one of his daughters unearthed it and called the Daily Mail, the whole thing might have turned out differently. For my mum, for me, and especially for Juniper Blythe. You probably read about it when it happened; it was in all the newspapers and on the TV news. Channel 4 even ran a special where they invited some of the recipients to talk about their letter, their particular voice from the past that had come back to surprise them. There was a woman whose sweetheart had been in the RAF, and the man with the birthday card his evacuated son had sent, the little boy who was killed by a piece of falling shrapnel a week or so later. It was a very good program, I thought: moving in parts, happy and sad stories interspersed with old footage of the war. I cried a couple of times, but thats not saying much: Im rather disposed to weep. Mum didnt go on the show, though. The producers contacted her and asked whether there was anything special in her letter that shed like to share with the nation, but she said no, that it was just an ordinary old clothing order from a shop that had long ago gone out of business. But that wasnt the truth. I know this because I was there when the letter arrived. I saw her reaction to that lost letter and it was anything but ordinary. It was a morning in late February, winter still had us by the throat, the flower beds were icy, and Id come over to help with the Sunday roast. I do that sometimes because my parents like it, even though Im a vegetarian and I know that at some point during the course of the meal my mother will start to look worried, then agonized, until finally she can stand it no longer and statistics about protein and anemia will begin to fly. I was peeling potatoes in the sink when the letter dropped through the slot in the door. The mail doesnt usually come on Sundays so that should have tipped us off, but it didnt. For my part, I was too busy wondering how I was going to tell my parents that Jamie and I had broken up. It had been two months since it happened and I knew I had to say something

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton eventually, but the longer I took to utter the words, the more calcified they became. And I had my reasons for staying silent: my parents had been suspicious of Jamie from the start, they didnt take kindly to upsets, and Mum would worry even more than usual if she knew that I was living in the flat alone. Most of all, though, I was dreading the inevitable, awkward conversation that would follow my announcement. To see first bewilderment, then alarm, then resignation cross Mums face as she realized the maternal code required her to provide some sort of consolation . . . But back to the mail. The sound of something dropping softly through the letter box. Edie, can you get that? This was my mother. (Edie is me; Im sorry, I should have said so earlier.) She nodded towards the hallway and gestured with the hand that wasnt stuck up the inside of the chicken. I put down the potato, wiped my hands on a tea towel, and went to fetch the post. There was only one letter lying on the welcome mat: an official post office envelope declaring the contents to be redirected mail. I read the label to Mum as I brought it into the kitchen. Shed finished stuffing the chicken by then and was drying her own hands. Frowning a little, from habit rather than any particular expectation, she took the letter from me and plucked her reading glasses from on top of the pineapple in the fruit bowl. She skimmed the post office notice and with a flicker of her eyebrows began to open the outer envelope. Id turned back to the potatoes by now, a task that was arguably more engaging than watching my mum open mail, so Im sorry to say I didnt see her face as she fished the smaller envelope from inside, as she registered the frail austerity paper and the old stamp, as she turned the letter over and read the name written on the back. Ive imagined it many times since, though, the color draining instantly from her cheeks, her fingers beginning to tremble so that it took minutes before she was able to slit the envelope open. What I dont have to imagine is the sound. The horrid, guttural gasp, followed quickly by a series of rasping sobs that swamped the air and made me slip with the peeler so that I cut my finger. Mum? I went to her, draping my arm around her shoulders, careful not to bleed on her dress. But she didnt say anything. She couldnt, she told me later, not then. She stood rigidly as tears spilled down her cheeks and she clutched the strange little envelope, its paper so thin I could make out the corner of the folded letter inside, hard against her bosom. Then she disappeared upstairs to her bedroom leaving a fraying wake of instructions about the bird and the oven and the potatoes. The kitchen settled in a bruised silence around her absence and I stayed very quiet, moved very slowly so as not to disturb it further. My mother is not a crier, but this moment her upset and the shock of itfelt oddly familiar, as if wed been here before. After fifteen minutes in which I variously peeled potatoes, turned over possibilities as to whom the letter might be from, and wondered how to proceed, I finally knocked on her door and asked whether shed like a cup of tea. Shed composed herself by then and we sat opposite one another at the small Formica-covered table in the kitchen. As I pretended not to notice shed been crying, she began to talk about the envelopes contents. A letter, she said, from someone I used to know a long time ago. When I was just a girl, twelve, thirteen.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton A picture came into my mind, a hazy memory of a photograph that had sat on my grans bedside when she was old and dying. Three children, the youngest of whom was my mum, a girl with short dark hair, perched on something in the foreground. It was odd; Id sat with Gran a hundred times or more but I couldnt bring that girls features into focus now. Perhaps children are never really interested in who their parents were before they were born; not unless something particular happens to shine a light on the past. I sipped my tea, waiting for Mum to continue. I dont know that Ive told you much about that time, have I? During the war, the Second World War. It was a terrible time, such confusion, so many things were broken. It seemed . . . She sighed. Well, it seemed as if the world would never return to normal. As if it had been tipped off its axis and nothing would ever set it to rights. She cupped her hands around the steaming rim of her mug and stared down at it. My familyMum and Dad, Rita and Ed and Iwe all lived in a small house together in Barlow Street, near the Elephant and Castle, and the day after war broke out we were rounded up at school, marched over to the railway station, and put into train carriages. Ill never forget it, all of us with our tags on and our masks and our packs, and the mothers, whod had second thoughts because they came running down the road towards the station, shouting at the guard to let their kids off; then shouting at older siblings to look after the little ones, not to let them out of their sight. She sat for a moment, biting her bottom lip as the scene played out in her memory. You mustve been frightened, I said quietly. Were not really hand-holders in our family or else Id have reached out and taken hers. I was, at first. She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Her face had a vulnerable, unfinished look without her frames, like a small nocturnal animal confused by the daylight. I was glad when she put them on again and continued. Id never been away from home before, never spent a night apart from my mother. But I had my older brother and sister with me, and as the trip went on and one of the teachers handed round bars of chocolate, everybody started to cheer up and look upon the experience almost like an adventure. Can you imagine? War had been declared but we were all singing songs and eating canned pears and looking out of the window playing I Spy. Children are very resilient, you know; callous in some cases. We arrived eventually in a town called Cranbrook, only to be split into groups and loaded onto various coaches. The one I was on with Ed and Rita took us to the village of Milderhurst, where we were walked in lines to a hall. A group of local women was waiting for us there, smiles fixed on their faces, lists in hand, and we were made to stand in rows as people milled about, making their selection. The little ones went fast, especially the pretty ones. People supposed theyd be less work, I expect, that theyd have less of the whiff of London about them. She smiled crookedly. They soon learned. My brother was picked early. He was a strong boy, tall for his age, and the farmers were desperate for help. Rita went a short while after with her friend from school. Well, that was it. I reached out and laid my hand on hers. Oh, Mum.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton Never mind. She pulled free and gave my fingers a tap. I wasnt the last to go. There were a few others, a little boy with a terrible skin condition. I dont know what happened to him, but he was still standing there in that hall when I left. You know, for a long time afterwards, years and years, I forced myself to buy bruised fruit if thats what I picked up first at the greengrocers. None of this checking it over and putting it back on the shelf if it didnt measure up. But you were chosen eventually. Yes, I was chosen eventually. She lowered her voice, fiddling with something in her lap, and I had to lean close. She came in late. The room was almost clear, most of the children had gone and the ladies from the Womens Voluntary Service were putting away the tea things. Id started to cry a little, though I did so very discreetly. Then all of a sudden, she swept in and the room, the very air, seemed to alter. Alter? I wrinkled my nose, thinking of that scene in Carrie when the light explodes. Its hard to explain. Have you ever met a person who seems to bring their own atmosphere with them when they arrive somewhere? Maybe. I lifted my shoulders, uncertain. My friend Sarah has a habit of turning heads wherever she goes; not exactly an atmospheric phenomenon, but still . . . No, of course you havent. It sounds so silly to say it like that. What I mean is that she was different from other people, more . . . Oh, I dont know. Just more. Beautiful in an odd way, long hair, big eyes, rather wild looking, but it wasnt that alone which set her apart. She was only seventeen at the time, in September 1939, but the other women all seemed to fold into themselves when she arrived. They were deferential? Yes, thats the word, deferential. Surprised to see her and uncertain how to behave. Finally, one of them spoke up, asking whether she could help, but the girl merely waved her long fingers and announced that shed come for her evacuee. Thats what she said; not an evacuee, her evacuee. And then she came straight over to where I was sitting on the floor. Whats your name? she said, and when I told her she smiled and said that I must be tired, having traveled such a long way. Would you like to come and stay with me? I nodded, I must have, for she turned then to the bossiest woman, the one with the list, and said that she would take me home with her. What was her name? Blythe, said my mother, suppressing the faintest of shivers. Juniper Blythe. And was it she who sent you the letter? Mum nodded. She led me to the fanciest car Id ever seen and drove me back to the place where she and her older twin sisters lived, through a set of iron gates, along a winding driveway, until we reached an enormous stone edifice surrounded by thick woods. Milderhurst Castle. The name was straight out of a gothic novel and I tingled a little, remembering Mums sob when shed read the womans name and address on the back of the envelope. Id heard stories about the evacuees, about some of the things that went on, and I said on a breath, Was it ghastly? Oh no, nothing like that. Not ghastly at all. Quite the opposite.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton But the letter . . . it made you The letter was a surprise, thats all. A memory from a long time ago. She fell silent then and I thought about the enormity of evacuation, how frightening, how odd it must have been for her as a child to be sent to a strange place where everyone and everything was vastly different. I could still touch my own childhood experiences, the horror of being thrust into new, unnerving situations, the furious bonds that were forged of necessity to buildings, to sympathetic adults, to special friendsin order to survive. Remembering those urgent friendships, something struck me: Did you ever go back, Mum, after the war? To Milderhurst? She looked up sharply. Of course not. Why would I? I dont know. To catch up, to say hello. To see your friend. No. She said it firmly. I had my own family in London, my mother couldnt spare me, and besides, there was work to be done, cleaning up after the war. Real life went on. And with that, the familiar veil came down between us and I knew the conversation was over. We didnt have the roast in the end. Mum said she didnt feel like it and asked whether I minded terribly giving it a miss this weekend. It seemed unkind to remind her that I dont eat meat anyway and that my attendance was more in the order of daughterly service, so I told her it was fine and suggested that she have a lie-down. She agreed, and as I gathered my things into my bag she was already swallowing two aspirins in preparation, reminding me to keep my ears covered in the wind. My dad, as it turns out, slept through the whole thing. Hes older than Mum and had retired from his work a few months before. Retirement hasnt been good for him: he roams the house during the week, looking for things to fix and tidy, driving Mum mad, then on Sunday he rests in his armchair. The God-given right of the man of the house, he says to anyone wholl listen. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and left the house, braving the chill air as I made my way to the tube, tired and unsettled and somewhat subdued to be heading back alone to the fiendishly expensive flat Id shared until recently with Jamie. It wasnt until somewhere between High Street Kensington and Notting Hill Gate that I realized Mum hadnt told me what the letter said. *** I stopped the car and read the signpost again, hairs beginning to quiver on the back of my neck. An odd sixth sense overcame me, and the cloudy memory that Id been struggling to bring into focus ever since Mums lost letter arrived in February resurrected itself. I climbed out of the car, as if in a dream, and followed where the signpost led. I felt like I was watching myself from the outside, almost as if I knew what I was going to find. And perhaps I did. For there they were, half a mile along the road, right where Id imagined they might be. Rising from the brambles, a set of tall iron gates, once grand but listing now at broken angles. Leaning, one towards the other, as if to share a weighty burden. A sign was hanging on the small stone gatehouse, a rusted sign that read MILDERHURST CASTLE.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton My heart beat fast and hard against my rib cage and I crossed the road towards the gates. I gripped a bar with each handcold, rough, rusting iron beneath my palmsand brought my face, my forehead, slowly to press against them. I followed with my eyes the gravel driveway that curved away, up the hill, until it crossed a bridge and disappeared behind a thick patch of woods. It was beautiful and overgrown and melancholy, but it wasnt the view that stole my breath. It was the thudding realization, the absolute certainty, that I had been there before. That I had stood at those gates and peered between the bars and watched the birds flying like scraps of nighttime sky above the bristling woods. Details murmured into place around me and it seemed as if Id stepped into the fabric of a dream; as if I were occupying, once again, the very same temporal and geographical space that my long-ago self had done. My fingers tightened around the bars and somewhere, deep within my body, I recognized the gesture. Id done the same thing before. The skin of my palms remembered. I remembered. A sunny day; a warm breeze playing with the hem of my dress my best dressthe shadow of my mother, tall in my peripheral vision. I glanced sideways to where she stood, watching her as she watched the castle, the dark and distant shape on the horizon. I was thirsty, I was hot, I wanted to go swimming in the rippling lake that I could see through the gates. Swimming with the ducks and moorhens and the dragonflies making stabbing movements among the reeds along the banks. Mum, I remembered saying, but she didnt reply. Mum? Her head turned to face me, and a split second passed in which not a spark of recognition lit her features. Instead, an expression that I didnt understand held them hostage. She was a stranger to me, a grown-up woman whose eyes masked secret things. I have words to describe that odd amalgam now: regret, fondness, sorrow, nostalgia; but back then I was clueless. Even more so when she said, Ive made a mistake. I should never have come. Its too late. I dont think I answered her, not then. I had no idea what she meant and before I could ask shed gripped my hand and pulled so hard that my shoulder hurt, dragging me back across the road to where our car was parked. Id caught a hint of her perfume as we went, sharper now and sour where it had mixed with the days scorching air, the unfamiliar country smells. And shed started the car, and wed been driving, and I was watching a pair of sparrows through the window when I heard it: the same ghastly cry that shed made when the letter arrived from Juniper Blythe.

Three Fading Sisters

Have you ever wondered what the stretch of time smells like? I cant say I had, not before I set foot inside Milderhurst Castle, but I certainly know now. Mold and ammonia, a pinch of lavender, and a fair whack of dust, the mass disintegration of very old sheets of paper. And theres something else, too, something underlying it all, something verging on rotten or stewed but not. It took me a while to work out what that smell was, but I think I know now. Its the past. Thoughts and dreams, hopes and hurts, all brewed together, fermenting slowly in the fusty air, unable ever to dissipate completely.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton Hello? I called, waiting at the top of the wide stone staircase for a return greeting. Time passed and none came, so I said it again, louder this time. Hello? Is anyone home? Mrs. Bird had told me to go on in, that the Sisters Blythe were expecting us, that shed meet me inside. In fact, shed been at great pains to impress upon me that I was not to knock or ring the bell or otherwise announce my arrival. Id been dubiouswhere I came from, entrance without announcement came pretty close to trespassingbut I did as shed bid me: took myself straight through the stone portico, beneath the arched walkway, and into the circular room beyond. There were no windows and it was dim despite a ceiling that swept up to form a high dome. A noise drew my attention to the rounded top, where a white bird had flown through the rafters and hovered now in a shaft of dusted light. Well then. The voice came from my left and I turned quickly to see a very old woman standing in a doorframe some ten feet away, the lurcher by her side. She was thin but tall, dressed in tweeds and a button-up collared shirt, almost gentlemanly in style. Her gender had been brittled by the years, any curves shed had sunken long ago. Her hair had receded from her forehead and sat short and white around her ears with a wiry stubbornness; the egg- shaped face was alert and intelligent. Her eyebrows, I noted as I moved closer, had been plucked to the point of complete removal then drawn in again, scores the color of old blood. The effect was dramatic, if a little grim. She leaned forward slightly on an elegant ivory-handled cane. You must be Miss Burchill. Yes. I held out my hand, breathless suddenly. Edith Burchill. Hello there. Chill fingers pressed lightly against mine and the leather strap of her watch fell noiselessly around her wrist bone. Marilyn Bird from the farmhouse said youd be coming. My name is Persephone Blythe. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet me. Ever since I learned of Milderhurst Castle, Ive been dying to see inside. Really? A sharp twist of her lips, a smile as crooked as a hairpin. I wonder why. That was the time, of course, to tell her about Mum, about the letter, her evacuation there as a girl. To see Percy Blythes face light up with recognition, for us to exchange news and old stories as we walked. Nothing could have been more natural, which is why it came as something of a surprise to hear myself say: I read about it in a book. She made a noise, a less interested version of ah. I read a lot, I added quickly, as if the truthful qualifier might somehow lessen the lie. I love books. I work with books. Books are my life. Her wrinkled expression wilted further in the face of such an innocuous response, and little wonder. The original fib was dreary enough, the additional biographical tidbits positively inane. I couldnt think why I hadnt just told the truth: it was far more interesting, not to mention honest. Some half-cocked, childish notion of wanting my visit to be my own, I suspect; for it to remain untinged by my mothers arrival fifty years earlier. Whatever the case, I opened my mouth to backtrack but it was too late: Persephone Blythe had already motioned for me to follow as she and the lurcher started down the gloomy corridor. Her pace was steady and her footfalls light, the cane, it seemed, paying mere lip service to her great age. Your punctuality pleases me, at any rate. Her voice floated back to me. I abhor tardiness.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton We continued in silence, deep and deepening silence. With each step, the sounds of outside were left more emphatically behind: the trees, the birds, the distant chattering of the somewhere brook. Noises I hadnt even realized I was hearing until they were gone, leaving a strange airy vacuum so stark my ears began to hum, conjuring their own phantoms to fill the void; whispering sounds, like children when they play at being snakes. It was something I would come to know well, the odd isolation of the castle interior. The way sounds, smells, sights that were clear outside the walls seemed somehow to get stuck in the old stone, unable ever to burrow their way through. It was as if over centuries the porous sandstone had absorbed its fill, trapping past impressions, like those flowers preserved and forgotten between the pages of nineteenth-century books, creating a barrier between inside and out that was now absolute. The air outside may have carried rumors of buttercups and freshly mown grass, but inside it smelled only of accumulating time, the muddy held breath of centuries. We passed a number of tantalizing sealed doors until finally, at the very end of the corridor, just before it turned a corner and disappeared into the further gloom, we came to one that stood ajar. A sliver of light smiled from inside, widening into a grin when Percy Blythe prodded it with her cane. She stepped back and nodded bluntly, indicating that I should enter first.

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION A long-lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a grand but moldering old place in the English countryside. It was home to Edies mother fifty years earlier, during World War II, but now the only current residents are the elderly Blythe sistersPersephone (Percy), Seraphina (Saffy), and Juniper. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mothers storyuncovering secrets hidden in the stones and discovering the long-awaited truth of what really happened in the distant hours of the past. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. The novel opens with the prologue from Raymond Blythes fictional, famous work, The True History of the Mud Man. He writes: The moat has begun to breathe. Deep, deep, mired in the mud, the buried mans heart kicks wetly. . . . The Mud Man opens an eye. Sharp, sudden, tracks it back and forth. Did you think that the Mud Man was a human being, a monster, or something else? Why did the author choose to open the novel with such a dark, frightening story? How did reading this prologue affect the way you entered the story? 2. A long-lost letter arrives in the post, and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a grand but moldering old place in the English countryside. It was home to Edies mother fifty years earlier, during World War II, but now the only current residents are the elderly Blythe sistersPersephone (Percy), Seraphina (Saffy), and Juniper. Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mothers story uncovering secrets hidden in the stones and discovering the long-awaited truth of what really happened in the distant hours of the past. 3. From the beginning, it is clear that words, books, and stories have a strong hold on Edie Burchill. Referring to the letter her mother receives from Juniper Blythe, Edie reflects, a letter will always seek a reader; . . . sooner or later, like it or not, words have a way of finding the light, of making their secrets known. Why does Junipers letter have such a strong impact on Meredith? How does Edies experience as an editor and her obsession with words impact her determination to unravel the mystery of Milderhurst Castle, the Blythe sisters, and her mothers role in their lives? Besides Junipers letter, what other wordsin the form of letters, diaries, stories, booksmake their secrets known in the novel? 4. Again and again, Milderhurst Castle is portrayed as a living, breathing entity, constructed of stones that sing and riddled with passageways that form a network of veins. When Edie first meets the sisters, Percy refers to herself as a buttress for the castles architectureIve done what was necessary to stop the walls collapsing around

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton uswhile Saffy cannot spend more than one night away from the castle, due to strong feelings about sleeping in her own bed and being on hand to prop up the castle, bodily if need be, should it begin to crumble. Why is Milderhurst Castle depicted in such human terms, and why are the sisters described as a physical part of the castle itself? To what extent does the castle depend on the sisters for its existence? To what extent do the sisters rely on the castle for their survival? 5. Edie has two encounters with Juniper in the first section of the novel. The first time, Juniper is a confused and disheveled old woman. Just pages later she is fresh faced, girlish, and dressed in the wedding gown that Saffy made for her so many years before. Discuss what Edie learns about Juniper in each instance and why the author depicts Juniper in contrasting ways in such quick succession. Does Edie have more sympathy for one version of Juniper than the other? Which version of Juniper is closer to who she really is? 6. With the exception of Juniper, the Blythe sisters do not know that Edie Burchill is Meredith Bakers daughter. Why doesnt Edie ever reveal who she is to the sisters? Do you think that Percy and Saffy had any knowledge of her true identity? 7. Saffy constantly expresses her displeasure over the war and how it has affected her life. She thinks to herself, It was a tragedy that so many of the nations flower gardens had been abandoned or given over to vegetable cultivation. . . . Lack of potatoes left a persons stomach growling, but absence of beauty hardened the soul. How does Saffy attempt to keep the castle beautiful despite the difficulties posed by the war, and why is beauty so important to her? What examples do you see of characters whose souls hardened because of a lack of beauty during the war? How does Saffys view of war and wartime life contrast with Percys? 8. As Saffy and Percy wait for Thomas Cavill to arrive at Milderhurst Castle on that fateful evening that he and Juniper are to announce their engagement, Saffy remarks, You mustnt prejudge him for being late, Percy. . . . Its the fault of the war. Nothing runs on time anymore. What does Saffy mean by this comment? To what extent does war still affect the sisters lives and life at Milderhurst Castle in the present-day sections of the novel? 9. Just as Aunt Rita never understood why Meredith did not want to leave Milderhurst and return home when the evacuation was over, Percy cannot understand why Saffy wants to leave the castle and take a job in London. Why are Meredith and Saffy both drawn to a life that is opposite to their own? What does Meredith gain by living in the country, and why does she run away from her parents when faced with the prospect of moving back to London? Why does Percy allow Juniper to go to London and not Saffy?

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton 10. As Edie and her mother sit in the emergency room after her fathers heart attack, Edie says, I was sunk by the sense that I knew everything and nothing of the person sitting next to me. The woman in whose body I had grown and whose house Id been raised was in some vital ways a stranger to me. Why is it so jarring for Edie to learn the secrets of her mothers past? Do you see any parallels between Edies discoveries about her mothers past and the discoveries that the Blythe sisters make about one another? How do the characters attempt to understand revelations about family members whom they thought they knew? 11. When Percy explains her reasons for not handing Milderhurst over to the National Trust, she says, A place is more than the sum of its physical parts; its a repository for memories, a record and retainer of all that has happened within its boundaries. In light of everything that happens in the novel, how do you interpret this statement? What does Milderhurst mean to the sisters and why do they feel so connected to it? Why do the Blythe sisters say that the castles stones sing of the distant hours and what does this mean? 12. Recalling the first time she encountered The True History of the Mud Man, Edie reflects that in my hands I held an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power. . . . [R]eal life was never going to be able to compete with fiction again. By contrast, Thomas, who teaches literature before he enlists in the army, believes that words on the page cannot compare to real life: When he read to his students about the battle cry of Henry V, he scraped against the shallow floor of his limited experience. War, he knew, would give him the depth of understanding he craved. Which characters perspective do you identify with more, and why? How does each characters viewpoint on reality versus fiction prove to be true or false based on their experiences throughout the novel? 13. Throughout the course of the novel, the author offers various perspectives and opinions about Junipers mental state and what sets her apart from her sisters. When Juniper hallucinates, some doctors prescribe pills, while Daddy said they were the voices of her ancestors and that she had been chosen specially to hear them. Why do you think the author is deliberately vague about what affects Juniper? Why is Juniper so afraid of becoming like her father? What does it mean for her to lose time when the past and present are so intertwined throughout the novel? Are Percy and Saffy justified in their efforts to keep Juniper as sheltered as they do? 14. Just as the characters of the novel often feel as if incidents from the past are occurring in the present day, the structure of the novel moves in time between past and present, allowing insight into characters at various stages in their lives and a unique window into the events that shaped them. Did you find this technique of switching between time periods effective? Which sections did you prefer, the past or present? Why do the events of the past play such a vital role in what happens in the present-day sections of the novel?

The Distant Hours, by Kate Morton

15. Toward the end of the novel, Edie learns the origins of the story of the Mud Man and Saffys nightmares. Edie thinks, It was little wonder hed been driven mad by guilt. If this is true, why does Raymond take up Saffys dream and turn it into a story for children to read? Does writing The True History of the Mud Man do anything to assuage his guilt? How does the publication of the book and the story affect the Blythe sisters? What is it about the story of the Mud Man that captivates readers to the point of obsession? Who can most lay claim to the story of the Mud Man? 16. Discuss the conclusion of the novel. Do you think Edie was honest about her reasons for not wanting to write the prologue to the new edition of The True History of the Mud Man? Do you think Edies involvement with the sisters in any way led to what happens to them at the end of the novel? Were you surprised by the fate of the sisters? Why or why not?

ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB 1. Saffy fondly recalls a game her family played where a location, a character type, and a word would be supplied, then Cooks largest egg-timer flipped, and the race would be on to craft the most entertaining fiction. Using the guidelines provided by Saffy, devise your own version of this writing game and play it with your book group. 2. Edie, an only child, marvels at the complicated bonds between the Blythe sisters: the intricate tangle of love and duty and resentment . . . [t]he glances they exchanged; the complicated balance of power established over decades; the games I would never play with rules I would never fully understand. Discuss the bonds between you and your siblings and whether or not you think the author captures that unique relationship. If you are an only child, talk about whether or not you wanted siblings as you were growing up. 3. While Edie is a full-time reader by trade, The True History of the Mud Man was the book that sparked her life-long interest in words and stories. Discuss some of the books that ignited your passion for reading as a child. If you have children, do you plan to share those books with them or have you done so already? 4. When Percy shows Edie around her fathers study, she notices a painting that Percy says scared them as children, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters by Goya. Look up this piece of artwork at www.museum.cornell.edu and discuss how the image relates to and illuminates the themes of madness and art in the novel.

THIS BURNS MY HEART

Samuel Park
Simon & Schuster Hardcover: 9781439199619 eBook: 9781439199633

Writing prose with the beauty of poetry, Samuel Park traces a young womans journey to hard-won maturity, alongside the meteoric rise of postwar Korea, in a novel which shines with eloquence and wisdom.
David Henry Hwang, Tony Award-winning author of M. Butterfly

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park

Authors Note
Dear Reader, Delicate. Precise. Beautiful. Black lines on rice paper, ink filling in flower buds and petals. The artist creating white space by lifting his hand in the air in the middle of a stroke. These are known as the four gentlemen flowers: orchid, chrysanthemum, plum blossoms, and bamboo. In ancient Korea, it was believed that you learned certain values from each. From the orchid, you learned grace; from the chrysanthemum, honesty; from the bamboo, strength; from the plum blossoms, perseverance. I learned about the art of the four flowers while researching my novel This Burns My Heart, and fell in love with the simplicity and elegance of ink drawings. I had grown up with those paintings in my house, but had never known their history or tradition. For my novel, I decided that the flowers represented the very qualities that my heroine, Soo-Ja, had to learn. Inspired by the adventurous life of my own mother, This Burns My Heart is about a young woman who, early on, is asked to pick between two men. She makes the wrong choice, unaware of the great love that she is giving up. Thrown into a life of hardship, she turns to her own courage and resilience. The four gentlemen flowers are truly beautiful to look at, and you can see them reproduced on screens, plates, and vases. But their beauty lies not just in the end result, but in the process of creating themand the values behind them. Likewise, a life is only beautiful when put together with honesty, grace, strength, and perseverance. In writing about the flowers, I loved the idea that a painting could be not only beautiful to the eye, but to the soul. The heroine of my novel wants to live a life as beautiful as a great painting, and she learns to do so by hanging on to these lessons. I hope that you will join her in that journey. Warm regards, Samuel Park

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memory. Samuel Park recollects the feeling of being a 10-year old exploring a new city.
I vividly recall my second trip to South Korea, as a 10-year old. I spent the entire time runningI chased my cousins through mazes, rushing from one corner of the village to the next. We did grown-up things, too, exploring the ancient temples in the countryside, and having meals at restaurants while sitting on the ground. But I remember the running the most, staying in an old village that seemed far, far from the high rises in the distance.

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park

Chapter One
Soo-Ja knew about the stranger. The one following her for the last four blocks. She kept her pace evenher instinct in situations like this was not to be scared, but to see it as a battle of wits, as if shed been handed a puzzle, or a task. She wanted to lose him, but do so elegantly, in the manner of a great escape artist. Her friend Jae-Hwawalking next to her, her homemade knit scarf blowing in the brisk Siberian windhadnt noticed him, and kept on chattering about the lover in the film theyd just seen. Was the man a secret agent from the North? Soo-Ja asked herself. The war had ended only seven years ago so it was feasible. It didnt help that the other side didnt sit across the ocean, or on a different continent, but rather just a few hundred miles away, cordoned off by an imaginary line drawn with chalk on a map. Soo-Ja fantasized that the man mistook her for the mistress of a high-ranking official, and wanted her to carry state secrets across the 38th parallel. Would he be disappointed, she wondered, to find out she was just a college student? Daughter of a factory owner, born in the year of the tiger? Soo-Ja pulled her compact out of her purse and looked into the round mirror. There he was, within the glimmering frame, in his white jacket and white pants. Western clothes. Appropriate, she thought. She could not imagine him in hanbok, or anything worn by her parents or her parents parents. From his self-satisfied grin to the rebellious extra inch of hair, this young man looked like a new species, a new breed. He walked behind her at a relaxed pace, his hands in his pockets, a bodyguard of sorts, there to protect her from men like him. Were being followed, Soo-Ja finally told Jae-Hwa, though she hadnt decided yet how to outwit him. She wouldnt just lose him. There had to be a scene of some kind; otherwise the anecdote was too dull, the narrative too brief. Also, he needed to be punished. Not horrendously, as he hadnt done anything terrible, but lightly, so hed learn that he couldnt just go after a pretty girl like that, couldnt simply claim her as his. Whos following us? asked Jae-Hwa, her voice panicky, vowels already in hiding, her hands hanging tightly to her friends arm. Was he a spoiler? One who damages virgins before their wedding day, rendering them useless? Jae-Hwa, with her short, boyish haircut, lacked her friends beauty, and in spite of thator maybe because of itoften found herself overplaying her own appeal. She imagined men coming after her, though they really sought her friend. A meot-yanggi, said Soo-Ja. Meot-yanggi: a flashy, vain person, showing off goods, wealth, or physique. Soo-Ja smiled at the fact that a single word could contain all that: a definition, a criticism, a jab. She turned around and glanced at him directly, boldly, and watched as he smiled at her and lowered his head slightly, a nod. Seeing him in natural scale, Soo-Ja was struck by how tall and lean he was. All around, the sunlight dimmed, as if he were pulling it down toward him. Soo-Ja knew then how she was going to lose him. As the street widened in front of her, she jumped into the delicious whirl of bodies, tents, and rickshaws swarming the marketplace. With Jae-Hwa barely able to keep up, Soo-Ja danced past peddlers waving hairbrushes in the air; zoomed by mother-daughter teams haggling with shopkeepers; expertly maneuvered around noodle stands and fishcake stalls. Tchanan, tchanan, she heard a peddler yell as he pointed at ceramic pots displayed on the

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park ground on top of white sheets. An old man coughedhis shoulders weighed down by containers of cooking gasthen flashed his broken teeth at Soo-Ja. The arms and legs of children brushed past her, their breaths spicy with chili peppers. Soo-Ja smiled, her eyes thrilled by the kinetic energy of carts zigzagging swiftly in all directions. Bodies came at her one after the other, faces shuffling as quickly as pictures in a deck of hato cards; mobile stands selling used clothes wheeled down unexpectedly, causing her to have to duck and sidestep. When she reached the edge of the market, Soo-Ja stopped and took a breath. She watched as a bulldozer across the street from her dug into a fenced-off patch of soil. It had long been a fascination of hers, watching construction workers rebuild bombed-out sites. It felt miraculous, how a factory could be sliced in half during the war, and then regrown, like the stubborn perennials. Soo-Ja loved this sense of reconstruction, her only complaint being that all the new buildings and houses looked exactly the same. She couldnt tell a newspaper office from a fire station, as if both structures were interchangeable plastic toys in a childs board game. Soo-Ja wondered if the men who erected these stone castles secretly feared that they would be bombed or burnt down once again. Is he still following us? Soo-Ja asked Jae-Hwa, smiling. She already knew the answer. Jae-Hwa turned around to look and saw the stranger walking toward them. He strained to keep his confidence, though he was clearly out of breath. Jae-Hwa dug her fingers deeper into Soo-Jas arm. I see him. Whatre we going to do? Soo-Ja pulled her friend close, with a daring look on her face, and they started running again. This time, Soo-Ja moved away from the main road and slipped into a tiny little street. She had entered a maze, a corridor about a meter wide. As they raced deeper into it, the two of them zigzagged into never-ending turnsenough to lose hound dogs, detectives, and even the young man on their trail. They squeezed past an old woman carrying a load of laundry on her head; evaded a group of children running in the opposite direction; ignored the hunger pangs from smelling soon-daethe sausage-shaped delicacy filled with vegetables and ricesold by a peddler on the corner. They giggled like schoolgirls, bumping onto the white clay walls as their bodies emerged in and out of shadows. They made their way out into the other side of the labyrinth, darting into a second main roada much quieter one, trodden by tired bodies rushing home. The peddlers here looked more worn-out, and so did their wares. A group of paraplegics huddled around a fire, listening to the radio. In the distance, a streetcar went by, its overhead wires slicing the sky into two. Jae-Hwatired, hungry, confusedturned to Soo-Ja. I wish hed stop following us! Should we ask someone for help? Listen, hes not the one following us. Were the ones leading him. What do you mean? asked Jae-Hwa. Im taking him someplace where theyll take care of kkang-pae like him. Where are you taking us to? Itll be a nice little surprise for our new friend. Soo-Ja took Jae-Hwas hand again and led her onward, diving into the night like an expert swimmer, splashing dots of black onto the asphalt. She knew she was only a block or two from her final goalthe police station.

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park Soo-Ja waited for the stranger to turn the corner, as she stood in front of the police stationa one-story brick building with high windows and a pointy spire on its awning. Next to Soo-Ja, a police officer appeared ready to lunge, eager to play hero for the young damsels. He fit the partburly, with massive hands, wearing his black cap low above his eyes. His dark blue uniform molded onto his large frame, his chest shining with the police insignia. When the stranger finally turned the corner and realized where Soo-Ja had led him to saw the punchline of the joke that had been toldhe immediately turned around to flee. The officer jumped at him, his hands and arms so quick as to make him seem like an octopus. The man in white struggledelbows hitting rib cages, hands made into fists, feet on tiptoe attempting to launch. But he looked like a teenager, so much larger was the officer. While subduing the young man, the officer kept taunting him by slapping the back of his head. I-nom-a! You like following girls? Would you like me following you around all day? Soo-Ja watched the complicated mechanics of the fight, the way the officer teased him by letting him go and then grabbing him again. The young man thrashed about like a boy being dressed down by his father, who happened to be a bear. Soo-Ja could see the frustration in his eyes, the long, desperate breaths. He had hunted her down through the alleyways of Won-dae-don, only to walk into a trap. Finally, the officer tossed the young man onto the ground, face against grime. The officer placed his foot on the young mans chest before he could even try to get up. Looking at the stranger in white, Soo-Ja realized that he was quite youngprobably their age, twenty-one or twenty-two. He was also handsome, with a small button nose, slightly puckered lips, and bright, intense eyes. He had an oval-shaped face, as delicate as if it had been penciled in, and marked by a dimple on his straight chin. Seeing him beaten up evoked a feeling of pity in Soo-Ja. She felt relief when the officer finally let go and let the boy lie by himself on the cement floor. What were you doing following these girls? the officer repeated. The stranger coughed a little and then spoke, between hard breaths. I just wanted to find out where she lived, he said. The cop turned around and looked directly at Soo-Ja, who felt more glad than ever that she hadnt led him to her own house. Then the officer turned to the stranger again. Why did you want to do that? So I could come back another day and ask her for a For a what? barked the cop, leaning over and slapping the back of the boys head again. For a date, the boy finally said, turning to the other side to evade the cops large gloved hands. A crowd had gathered around them. It was now, officially, a scene. The other cops looked at Soo-Ja. In a second, the situation had flipped: they saw themselves in the young mans shoes and sympathized with himrooted for him even. Then why didnt you act like a normal person from the beginning and just talk to us? asked Jae-Hwa. Instead of following us around and scaring us to death? The young man got up slowly. He could probably feel the tide turning, his emotional capital increasing by the minute. He shook the dirt off his clothes and turned to Soo-Ja. His white jacket was no longer white, but rather a combination of sand, grime, and blood. But even like thishis face red, his eyes half shuthe still radiated a certain imperious presence. Soo-Ja

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park could tell that he came from a rich family. They stood there like equals, while the others became mere plebeians, extras in the background. Lets start over. My name is Min Lee, he said, bowing to Soo-Ja. My father is Nam Lee, the industrialist. I shouldve had the guts to talk to you. If I promise to behave, will you go on a date with me? Soo-Ja looked at his dirty clothes, his bruised face. He reminded her of a fig fallen from a tree, its broken skin an invitation to worms. She sensed a kind of spotlight over her, and the crowd holding its breath, waiting for an answer. The world circled around her body, as she weighed the pros and cons of what seemed like a big decision. How could she offer another blow to this young man, whod already been so mangled and mistreated by all of them? All right, said Soo-Ja, and she could feel the collective relief of the crowd watching. You can pick me up for a date sometime. But youll have to find out where I live on your own. Because Im not planning on telling you. Where have you been? Your fathers been waiting for you! called the servant, in her gray hanbok uniform, with rags in her hands. Soo-Ja had just rushed past the main gate, entering the hundred-year-old compound that she called home. She stood in the middle of the courtyard, her human presence instantly providing balance to the elementsthe dark sky melted into the wave-shaped black tiles on the rooftop, ebbing into the curved eaves connecting the head and the body of the one-story house, which in turn blended into the lighter shades of the thick wooden doors. On the ground, the white, hand-washed stone floors flowed into the roots and stems of a grove of pine trees, their needles swaying to the side, their cones hatching open like chicken eggs. Did he say why? asked Soo-Ja, glancing at the main house. The round lamp bulbs illuminated her fathers familiar, rotund shape, sitting expectantly in the middle of the room. What have you done this time? Now go in! Dont keep your parents waiting any longer, said the servant, before heading back to the kitchen. Soo-Ja ran up the stone steps leading to the main house, but took her time reaching the room, letting her shadow announce her arrival first. She glanced down at the dark yellow paper doors, the fiber thick and rough to the touch, the surface porous, almost alive. Her breathing slowed a little, and her fingers carefully slid the doors open, one in each direction, revealing the waiting figures of her parents inside, both sitting on the floor. Soo-Jas father looked up from the account book in front of him on his writing table and put away the square rubric he used to sign checks. Next to him, Soo-Jas mother held a luminous silver-colored brass bowl, with loose grains of white rice scattered around its rim. They had just finished dinner, and half-empty plates of banchan sat on the lacquered mahogany dining tray in front of them: spicy cabbage, soybean sprouts, baby octopus dipped in chili pepper paste. Where have you been all night? Never mind. Do you know what this is? Soo-Jas father asked, removing his eyeglasses and waving a letter at her. Soo-Ja sat down across from him on the bean-oiled floor. She tried to look ladylike, with her knees touching and her feet behind her. She couldnt bear to stay in that position long and switched her legs around.

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park No, Father. I received a visitor at the factory this morning. Who was it? asked Soo-Ja, pressing her fingers against the floor, where the shiny laminate had turned yellow over time. It was a man from the Foreign State Department. He came to talk to me about a job for you in the Foreign Service. Do you know about this? Soo-Ja bit her lip. What did he say? Some nonsense about a daughter of mine applying for their diplomat training program. Although I cant imagine a daughter of mine would go behind my back and do this without asking my permission. But, lets say, if a daughter of yours did apply for the program . . . did she receive news that shed been accepted? asked Soo-Ja, anxiously moving her body forward, her back perfectly straight. Soo-Jas father looked at her, exasperated. How could you do this without even asking me first? Im sorry, abeoji. But you wouldnt have let me if Id asked you. For a good reason, said Soo-Jas mother, speaking for the first time, as she rearranged the oval millet-filled pillow under her. If you want to work before you get married, you can become a teacher or a secretary. A diplomat? Ive never heard of such a thing. Soo-Ja glanced at her mother. She was a small-boned woman, who looked older than her forty-four years. She kept her hair in a net a lot of the time and wore grandmotherly clothes: layers of heavy wool sweaters, old-fashioned loose pantaloons, and duck-shaped white socks. She never acted like a rich woman, and possessed no jewelry. Thats not what I want to do. I want to travel, said Soo-Ja. Can Ican I see what the letter says? Soo-Jas father hesitated, then handed her the letter. Soo-Ja read it eagerly, and she reached the middle before realizing shed been accepted. Her heart immediately began to flutter, as if she had a bird trapped inside her chest, madly trying to break away. Soo-Ja looked up at her parents, smiling, expecting to see pride reflected in their eyes. But she found none. You must be out of your mind to think youre going to Seoul, said Soo-Jas mother. She leaned her face over a small container of cooking gas until the tobacco in her pipe began to burn. What would people say if we let you go live alone in a strange city? That just isnt done. Next door, in the kitchen, the cook and her helpers had been on their feet for hours by the kitchen furnace. They were preparing the food for the next days Seollal holiday, steaming song-pyeon over a bed of aromatic pine needles in a gigantic iron pot. But no sounds emanated from the kitchen, as if the preparations for the feast were on hold, and the servants, too, were being chastised. We have to protect you, Soo-Jas mother continued. What do you think would happen with no one to watch out for you? What would our friends and business associates say if they heard we let you go to Seoul on your own? Theyd think weve gone mad, that were incompetent parents. Soo-Ja could hear noises coming from the kitchen again, as the servants resumed their cooking. She heard the sound of a pigs head being chopped off with a butcher knife, its entrails thrown into the pan, sizzling over the fire. The air in the room felt heavy, and Soo-Ja felt bound

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park to her spot. I would work very hard, pleaded Soo-Ja. I would go from my classes to my room and from my room to my classes. I would not speak to anyone. I would visit Aunt Bong-Cha frequently, so she could verify that Im all right. Soo-Jas father looked pensive. Your mothers right. Seoul is not a safe city. You hear on the radio every day about clashes between protestors and the police. There have been clashes everywhere! said Soo-Ja, making her hands into fists. But not quite like in Seoul, her father retorted. Its the nations capital. The Blue House is there. It attracts all kinds of troublemakers. These demonstrations arent going to last forever. Theyll be over soon, said Soo-Ja, almost rising to her feet. She made herself as still as a stone pagoda, hoping that their words would slide over her like rain in a storm. Stop it, Soo-Ja, said her mother, signaling an end to the discussion. She took the pipe out of her mouth and waved it in her daughters direction. Are you a good daughter, or are you a fox daughter? This is for the best. With that final dismissal, Soo-Ja knew she would not be able to go to Seoul. Shed never be a diplomat. The pain from this realization was so intense, Soo-Ja had to balance on the floor, for fear it would give way from under her. Soo-Ja asked herself why the ground was shaking, until she realized it was she herself who was. Youre wrong, she said. I will go. I will find a way. At around midnight, Soo-Ja was awakened by the sound of wolves howling, except these wolves were also calling out her name. Soo-Ja rubbed her eyes, still red from crying, and quickly rose from the floor, pushing aside the heavy, quilted blankets. She reached into her dresser and grabbed the first thick garment she could finda long brown coat with fish-hook buttons that came down to her knees. She put it on and rushed out of her room, toward the source of the noise. Soo-Ja ran through the many wings of the house, her bare feet rapping against the hard cement floors. Her hurried breath echoed through the large, airy rooms, filled with huge armoires, paintings and scrolls against the walls. Her brothers sliding doors opened and shut as she went by, their sleepy eyes adjusting to her as her nightgown flew in the air, like wings, underneath her coat. When Soo-Ja reached the courtyarddark but for a small lamp over the murky lotus pondshe saw her father standing there already. He wore his glasses and was in his pajamas, listening to the ruckus of the college boys outside the gate. Show us your face! Show us your face just once! they called out. Just one glance! Soo-Ja didnt feel flattered. It was embarrassing that her father had to listen to this. She knew the boys were drunk with soju, and just being young. They didnt know love; they were only imitating its gestures. Too bashful to even speak to her in class, they couldnt have become courtly lovers overnight.

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION Set in South Korea during the 1960s, This Burns My Heart centers on Soo-Ja, an ambitious young woman who finds herself trapped in an unhappy, controlling marriage. She struggles to give her daughter a better life and to overcome the oppression of her husband, while pining for the man she truly loves. Ultimately, she must make her own way in a society caught between tradition and modernity. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Early in their courtship, Soo-Ja thinks of Min as weak: But what she realized was that she wouldnt mind that, if she had to be the strong one. Shed like to swoop in and care for Min, who sometimes had the air of an orphan . . . He was the opposite of Yul, who seemed to need nothing and no one. Is Soo-Jas perception accurate? Does Min change throughout the book, or has he just masked himself during their courtship? Is Soo-Ja nave to want such an unbalanced (and untraditional) relationship? 2. Soo-Ja is angry that she was tricked by Min, but her objective was to trick him as well. Is she getting what she deserved? Who had better motivation? Do their motivations matter? 3. Why do Soo-Ja and Yul have such a strong connection, even though they rarely see each other? 4. Discuss Soo-Jas relationship with her parents. Which parent is she closer to? Which parent understands her better? 5. Compare Soo-Jas relationship with her parents to that of Min and his parents. Do you see any similarities? 6. After hearing about Soo-Jas ordeal when Hana was lost, her father tells her, When you let me be your father and let me worry about you, care for you, and even suffer for you, youre not doing a favor to yourself, youre doing a favor to me. When you need me, I am alive. Discuss the significance of this statement. How is this true in his life and in Soo-Jas? Do you think this statement applies to all parents? 7. Min asks Soo-Ja, If you had to choose, would you rather be yourself or be Eun-Mee? in an attempt to elicit empathy from her. Soo-Ja realizes, The thing about capturing a prize fish is that everyone admires the fish, and soon forgets about the fisherman. Do you think Soo-Ja feels pity for Min? Do you feel it? Why or why not?

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park 8. When Hana criticizes Soo-Ja for having submitted to a life of unhappiness, Soo-Ja realizes that she had never lived for herself, and in that, she found her greatest mistake and her greatest glory. Her selflessness had not been entirely chosen, but rather forced out of her, by her family. Do you agree? What could Soo-Ja have done differently? What would you have done in her place? What forces were working against her? 9. Why does Min finally agree to let Soo-Ja and Hana go? What causes his change of heart, and why did it take him so long? 10. The title of the novel is This Burns My Heart, which is how Soo-Ja and Yul feel about their forced separation. Discuss the meaning of the title, and how Soo-Ja and Yul deal with their pain. What else does the title capture in the novel? 11. Throughout the novel, Soo-Ja regrets that she said no to Yuls proposal back when she was twenty-two. Were only given one life, and its the one we live, she had thought; how painful now, to realize that wasnt true, that you would have different lives, depending on how brave you were, and how ready. How does this statement compare with her revelation that the life she had was in fact the one shed been supposed to have. Reread both passages. Which do you agree with, or do you have a different philosophy? In your own life, can you see one monumental decision that changed the course of your life, even if you didnt know it at the time? 12. Discuss the role of women in the novel. How does their position in society shift during Soo-Jas lifetime? Think about the increasing opportunities for Soo-Jas mother, herself, and her daughter Hana. 13. The changing society of South Korea after the Korean War provides the backdrop for the story, and one of the themes of this novel is the balance of traditional family roles with an increasingly modern society. Discuss examples of this conflict that stood out to you in the novel. How do you see the growth of the country evidenced throughout the novel? ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB 1. Learn more about the time period of This Burns My Heart and the struggles between North and South Korea. Read about Korean customs and history at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2800.htm#history and check out maps and photos at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ks.html. 2. Try some Korean food at your book club meeting, such as kimchee (a vegetable side dish), bulgogi (Korean barbecue), or bibimbap (vegetables and rice). Find recipes and information about Korean dining customs at http://www.lifeinkorea.com/food/index.cfm. If you want to avoid washing dishes, try

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park holding your meeting at a Korean restaurant instead! 3. The girls who stay at Soo-Jas hotel are fans of the Korean band the Pearl Sisters. Check out the video for one of the bands most popular songs at the authors website, http://samuelpark.com/clips. A CONVERSATION WITH SAMUEL PARK This novel is based on your mothers story. What inspired you to write it down? Something really extraordinary happened to my mother the day before her wedding: another man tried to get her to choose him, instead. She was equally attracted to him, but what woman in her right mind goes off with a stranger the day before her wedding? So she said no, and once her own marriage turned into a shambles, she began to wonder, what if . . .? As a writer, I thought that was an irresistible hook for a novel, and couldnt resist fictionalizing it. Who was that man? What was their relationship like? Did they ever see each other again? The questions that kept coming back to me were, what are the consequences and reverberations of our choices? What does it mean to pick X instead of Y? Do you still have the life you were supposed to have, or is it another life altogether? Was your mother involved in the writing process? How much is true, and how much did you fictionalize? My mother didnt know I was writing a novel inspired by her life. If I had told her, I would have become too self-conscious to continue. She turned out to be okay with it, which was a relief. My mother did ask, however, not to tell people which parts were fact, and Ivemostly stayed true to my word. Its been a balancing actbeing honest about my inspirations, yet also respecting her privacy. I would say this is a book that is inspired by my mothers life and her spirit, but at the end of the day, its a work of fiction. The characters were born out of my imagination, and all the real-life events were rearranged for dramatic effect. Did you have to do research on Korean language and customs? How much of your history and culture is a part of your life today? I read a lot of books, and spent about a year consuming only Korean-language films on DVD and VHS, and that was all I would watch. I especially loved discovering films from the period the book is set in, like Madame Freedom and School Trip. Because of their low budgets, many of these productions were shot on the streets, almost vrit style, and you get to see what buildings and streets looked like in the 50s and 60s. I also came across a pretty great resource: the Korea Annual, an almanac published every year by the Hapdong News Agency. If you want to know what kinds of fish were being sold in the stalls in 1964, you can find that information there. Ive also been to Korea twice, when I was younger, and have vivid memories from both tripsthe maze that Soo-Ja runs through in the opening scene of Chapter 1, for instance, really

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park exists and is only a block from my uncles old house. Youve written a novella, Shakespeares Sonnets, that was published in 2006. How have you changed or grown as a writer? Why did you decide to branch into historical fiction? In those five years, I grew a lot as a writer. In the beginning, I measured my success by how quickly people said they turned the pagesI wanted my stories to be page-turners. But while you do want the reader to keep turning the pages and feel immersed by the story and the characters, at times you actually need readers to stop turning the pages and be swept by their own feelings. When a reader is struck by a burst of emotion, or inspired to reflect upon a thought, those are the moments when the novel actually works. And getting people to respond that way, especially emotionally, is the hardest thing to do. I can describe someone kicking a dog and get cheap, easy emotionbut truly heartfelt emotion, where you feel genuine investment in the situation, is much harder to elicit, and requires more craft. Shakespeares Sonnets was made into a short film that you also wrote and directed. How was creating a film different from writing the novel? I wanted to direct films when I was younger, and I used to love making shorts. I remember one day we were shooting in a friends apartment, and it was nonstop drama: I had to herd my friends unruly cats into a bathroom, and deal with an angry building manager who wanted to kick us out. At one point, I didnt know if wed have a lead actor, since the person who went to pick him up called to say he wasnt answering the door. I dont know if that was good preparation for writing a novel, but a bookseller once told me that my writing is very cinematic. When I write, I want the reader to feel can picture the action unfolding in front of her, and see and hear all the characters. Ideally, the reader feels like she is right there in the room with them, and everything is happening at that exact moment. Do you see yourself writing more contemporary fiction or more historical fiction? How is the writing process different for each genre? I see myself doing both, actually. Writing contemporary fiction is a lot easier, in the sense that youre free to use any metaphor or reference you wish, and so the range of tools available to you is much larger. But writing historical fiction can be very satisfying, in that the limitations placed upon you free your imagination, like a haiku. I especially like writing historical fiction when the focus is not on famous figures, but on ordinary people whose lives illustrate historical shifts. When we discuss history, most people conjure up political events, economic policies, and important dates, but those dont account for the subterranean feelings and desires circulating through the citizenryand to me, those are just as important. In the book, Soo-Jas quickly changing life serves as a metaphor for her countrys own transformation. She stands, in many ways, for South Korea. The changes in her gender rolesfor instance, from traditional daughter to more independent businesswomanend up mirroring South Koreas own shift from a poor, rural country into a rich, industrialized one.

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park You maintain an online blog at your website (www.samuelpark.com). How is blogging different from (or similar to) writing a book? Do you try to write every day? Blogging is a form of speech, and reading a blog is like listening to someone on the phone tell you about his day. Reading a novel, on the other hand, is more like putting on your earphones and listening to music. The words have to do more than just provide information; they need to fulfill some unarticulated desire for beauty, comfort, conflict. They engage with your unconscious. When you write a blog, youre essentially transcribing conversation. But when you write a novel, you pour onto the page a much more complicated soup thats in your head and in your heartthe combustion between your past experiences, your emotions, and your imagination. Why did you choose the title This Burns My Heart? You use the Korean word chamara to describe the pain between Soo-Ja and Yul. How is this word significant? I suppose the title and the concept of chamara are intertwinedone is the condition and the other is the response to it. When youre in love and you cant have the other person, the pain can be almost physicalyour heart literally hurts; it feels like its burning. But theres nothing you can do but stand the pain. Chamara is a concept that Im not sure you can fully translate; it literally means hang in there, or try to bear it, but a closer definition might be swallow your pain. It implies that you really cant do anything about your sorrowsall you can do is try to persevere, which is essentially what Soo-Ja does through the course of the novel. Also, even though the words burns and heart are the most evocative images in the title, I actually chose the title because of the demonstrative determiner this. What is the this that is burning her heart? Is this the longing that characterizes the life of someone who cannot have her true love? Is this the gap between the life wed like to have and the one we actually do have? Or maybe this has to do with something even less specific, and just refers to the condition of being in the world, open and vulnerable to all the hurts and joys and pains that come with it. You are an English professor at Columbia College Chicago. Does your teaching affect your writing? What inspired you to become a professor? Teaching English lit to undergraduates can be old-fashioned at times, and you end up following the 1950s New Criticism model of isolating and analyzing important passages. For the instructor, this means reading and rereading the same passage hundreds of times, so that different voices become ingrained in you. This can be useful in as heteroglossic a genre as the novel. For the character of Eun-Mee, for instance, I borrowed the voices of Lydia Bennet Elizabeths vain and boy-crazy younger sister in Pride and Prejudiceand that same novels Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the haughty noblewoman whose speech drips with pretension and entitlement. My love for characters like themand Lizzie, of courseinspired me to go on to graduate school and become an English professor. Who are your favorite authors? What are you currently reading?

This Burns My Heart, by Samuel Park Some of my favorite contemporary authors include Curtis Sittenfeld, Sarah Waters, Ann Patchett, John Burnham Schwartz, Andre Aciman, Nami Mun, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, and Michael Cunningham. My favorite classic authors are Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Emily Bront, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and E. M. Forster. Im currently reading a lot of books about a country that will remain unmentionedits research for my next book. Who are some of your literary influences and how did their work help to inspire you when writing This Burns My Heart? I love all of Jane Austens novels, as you can already tell, but Pride and Prejudice in particular influenced me. Ive read and reread it about ten times, and a few years ago I decided to break it down scene by scene, and that helped me see what made each section work so well. Part of what she does so brilliantly is to find external means to articulate inner turmoil. In the scene, for instance, at Pemberley, when Lizzie realizes that she made a mistake in turning down Darcy, Austen dramatizes her discovery by having her engage with the external signs of Darcys good characterthe beautiful artwork in his estate, mirroring the harmony of his mind. I really love how Austens heroines are strong and spirited, but also prone to making self-defeating mistakes. Finally, shes brilliant at depicting insular, constrictive customs. In many ways, This Burns My Heart is Pride and Prejudice in Korea, imbued with a sense of sorrow that is uniquely Korean. Also, I enjoy reading 19th-century. British novels, and This Burns My Heart has a Victorian triple-decker structurethough I cheated and added a part fourand is really three novels in one, allowing you to follow a character over different stages of her life, much like Great Expectations, or Jane Eyre. Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists? Give all you can, then give ten times more. Write the best possible book for you to write, then add three great scenes. Dont be satisfied with good enough, or with publishable. If you think you can make something in your booka character, a scenebetter, then take the time to make it better. Ask yourself, is the book, in its current form, one that readers would tell others about, and that newspapers would review positively? Often enough, we stop too soon. Take the time to make it the absolute best book you can write, because you have to win the reader over line by line, page by page, scene by scene. You cannot take anyones interest for granted. At the end of the day, youre asking someone to fork over thirty bucks, and hand you six to seven hours of time. You better earn every dollar and every minute.

AN ATLAS OF IMPOSSIBLE LONGING

Anuradha Roy
Free Press Paperback: 9781451608625 eBook: 9781451609202

Every once in a great while, a novel comes along to remind you why you rummage through shelves in the first place. Why you peck like a magpie past the bright glitter of publishers promises. Why you read.This, you think, is the feeling you had as you read Great Expectations or Sophies Choice or The Kite Runner. This is why you read fiction at all. Anuradha Roys An Atlas of Impossible Longing is such a book, a novel to convince us that boldly drawn sagas with larger-than-life characters are still possible in a relentlessly postmodern world.
Marie Arana, The Washington Post

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy

Authors Note
My fathers sister lived in a rambling, many-floored, many-roomed joint family house in the older part of Calcutta, and when my brother and I were taken on visits to that house, we entered a different era. Corridors, staircases, terraces, different food smells, caged birds, people, conversations, snatches of songswe passed all this as we walked up many flights of steep, dark stairs to reach my aunts set of rooms. On one of the landings there was a picture of the familys country home, abandoned because it went permanently under water years ago. This image of a pillared mansion half-submerged by a river kept coming back to me over the years, and gradually peoplethe novels charactersfloated up out of its surroundings and An Atlas of Impossible Longing began. When a novel begins I barely know it myself. Some people have appeared in my headIm not quite sure from whereand they demand that their stories be told. In the middle of my daily lifemy battle with traffic or my dog demanding her walkthese just-appeared people murmur and sigh somewhere in the back of my head. Slowly their voices acquire tone and timbre, the place defines itself, the people come closer; out of the mist their blurred edges become sharper. Then one day, at a magical point, the world of the book becomes a planet spinning away on its own. Its left my hands, cut loose. It doesnt need me any more. Now its a place for readers to inhabit. My brother and I read a book called The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw when we were children. It was about Ranofer, an orphan boy in ancient Egypt. He is a goldsmiths apprentice who discovers that his evil half-brother, who works at the same shop, is stealing from the tombs in the Valley of Kings. It was a thrilling, tense, atmospheric books and for days after reading it, it seemed imperative to eat whole raw onions instead of real mealsbecause that was all poor, scrounging Ranofer found to eat some days. Im sure Ill steal glances over a shoulder for Ranofers goldsmiths shop if I ever go to Egypt. His Egypt is my Egypt. Ive already been there, sort of. All readers of fiction carry within themselves sediments of the places they have traveled to in books, the people theyve met on the way. Therefore the strange dj vu is when you land in a foreign country and wonder if youve been there before. Anuradha Roy

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy

We asked our Wanderlust authors to share their favorite travel memory. Anuradha Roys recalls her first experience of autumn.
The first morning that I stepped out into the garden at my college in Cambridge, England, crystallizes all travel for me. It was October. I had never seen or smelt or felt autumn before because I had never left India before, and the plains of India dont have an autumn of the leaf-fall kind. The mellowness of the light, the soft- green of the grass, the absolute silence but for the crunch of fallen leaves, the drifting smells from the college kitchen of the biweekly ratatouilleit was far removed from anything I had known; only then did I realise I had left home and would not go back the same person.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy

One
In the warm glow of fires that lit the clearing at the centre of straw-roofed mud huts, palm-leaf cups of toddy flew from hand to hand. Men in loincloths and women in saris had begun to dance barefoot, kicking up dust. Smoke curled from cooking fires and tobacco. The drums, the monotonous twanging of a stringed instrument, and loud singing obliterated the sounds of the forest. A man with a thin, frown-creviced face topped by dark hair combed back from his high forehead sat as still as a stone image in their midst, in a chair that still had its arms but had lost its backrest. His long nose struck out, arrow-like, beneath deep-set eyes. He had smoked a pipe all evening and held one polite leaf cup of toddy that he had only pretended to sip. His kurta and dhoti were an austere white, his waistcoat a lawyerly black. He did not appear to hear the singing. But his eyes were on the dancers: wasnt that girl in the red sari the one who had come with baskets of wild hibiscus that she had flung carelessly into a corner of his factory floor? And that man who was dancing with his arm around her waist, wasnt he one of the honey-collectors? It was hard to tell, with their new saris and dhotis, the flowers in their hair, the beads flying out from necks, the firelight. The man leaned forward, trying to tell which of the sweat-gleaming faces he had encountered before in his small workforce. The brown-suited, toad-like figure sitting on a stool next to him nudged him in the ribs. Something about these tribal girls, eh, Amulya Babu? Makes long-married men think unholy thoughts! And do you know, theyll sleep with any number of men they like! He emptied his cup of toddy into his mouth and licked his lips, saying, Strong stuff ! I should sell it in my shop! A bare-chested villager refilled the cup, saying, Come and dance with us, Cowasjee Sahib! And Amulya Babu, you are not drinking at all! This is the first time people from outside the jungle have come as guests to our harvest festival. And because I insisted. I said, its Cowasjee Sahib and Amulya Babu who give us our roti and salt! We must repay them in our humble way! A tall, hard-muscled man stood nearby, listening, lips curling with contempt as his relative hovered over the four or five friends Cowasjee had brought with him, radiating obeisance as he refilled their cups. Beyond the pool of firelight, cooking smells, and noise, the forest darkened into shadows. Somewhere, a buffalo let out a mournful, strangled bellow. The drums gathered pace, the girls linked their arms behind each others waists, swaying to the rhythm, and the men began to sing: A young girl with a waist so slender that I can put my finger around it, Is going down to the well for water. With swaying hips she goes. My life yearns with desire. My bed is painted red.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy Red are my blankets. For these four months of rain and happiness Stay, stay with me. Without you I cannot eat, Without you I cannot drink. Ill find no joy in anything. So stay, stay, for the months of rain, And for happiness with me.

One of the girls in the line of dancers separated herself from her partners. She had noticed Amulyas preoccupied expression, wondered how a man could remain unmoved by the music, not drink their wine. She came forward with a smile, her beads and bangles jingling, her bare shoulders gleaming in the firelight, orange sari wrapped tight over her young body. The toddy made her head spin a little when she bent down to Amulya. As he tried to scramble away, she stroked his cheek and said, Poor babuji, are you too pining for someone? She leaned closer and whispered into his ear, Wont you come and dance? It wipes sorrows away. Amulya looked up beyond her childish face, framed by curling hair which smelled of a strong, sweet oil, at the flamboyant purple flower pinned into her bun. It had a ring of lighter petals within the purple ones, and a pincushion of stamens. Passiflora, of course. Yes, certainly Passiflora. But what species? Despite the haze of alcohol that made her eyes slide from thing to thing, the girl noticed that the mans gaze was not on her face, but on the flower. She unpinned it and held it out to him. A deep dimple pierced her cheek. The drums rolled again, a fresh song started, and she tripped back to her friends with a laugh, looking once over her shoulder. Hey, Amulya Babu, the girl likes you! Cowasjee cried, slapping Amulyas thigh. You can turn down food and drink, but how can you turn down a lusting woman? Go on, dance with her! Thats the done thing in these parts! Amulya stood up from his chair and moved away from Cowasjees hand. I have to leave now, he said, his tone peremptory. In his left hand he clutched the purple flower. With the other he felt about for his umbrella. Amulya understood he was an anomaly. When still new in the town adjoining the jungle, he had tried to make himself part of local society by going to a few parties. Songarhs local rich, they too had hopes of him, as a metropolitan dandy perhaps, laden with tales and gossip from the big city, conversant with its fashions, bright with repartee, a tonic for their jaded, small- town appetites. He had had many eager invitations. After the first few parties, at which he refused offers of whisky and pink gins, and then waited, not talking very much, for dinner to be served and the evening to end, he had realised that perhaps his being there was not serving any purpose. Was he really becoming a bona fide local by attending these parties when his presence emanated obligation? Todaythese festivities at the village whose people were his workforcehe had thought it would be different. He had, for a change, wanted to come. He had only ever seen tribal people at workwhat were they like at play, what were their homes like? The opportunity had seemed too good to miss; but Cowasjee, in whom the bare-shouldered village

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy girls seemed to unleash more than his usual loutishness, had ensured that this evening was like all the others. Amulya looked around for someone to thank, but everywhere people sat on their haunches drinking, or they danced, enclosed in worlds of private rapture. The drums had speeded up, the twanging could scarcely keep pace. Where was his umbrella? And his office bag? Was his tonga waiting for him as instructed? Was anyone sober enough to light his way to the tonga? Oh sit, sit, Amulya Babu, Cowasjee said, tugging Amulyas sleeve. You cant go without eating, theyll be sure their food was too humble for you, theyll feel insulted. The night is young and we have stories to swap! Have you heard this one? Cowasjee cackled in anticipation of his punchline. Amulya sat again, annoyed and reluctant, barely able to summon up a strained smile to the yodelled laughs that accompanied the ensuing discussion about why a womans two holes smelled different despite being geographically proximate. Just like the difference between Darjeeling tea and Assam! one of Cowasjees friends shrieked. Both in the hills of eastern India, but their aromas worlds apart! The third said, You bugger! More like the difference between the stink of a sewage nullah and a water drain! They nudged each other and pointed at the girls dancing by the fire. Shes for you, giggled one. How bout taking her home and confirming the AssamDarjeeling hypothesis? The tall, muscular villager stepped out from the shadows, one fist clenched around a long bamboo pole. In two rapid strides, he and his weapon were towering over them. Cowasjee shrank back on his stool. The obsequious middleman noticed the threat and scurried out from a corner. He said something over his shoulder to the drummer, then to a woman tending a cooking pot. The drums fell suddenly quiet. Confused, the dancers stopped mid-stride. The woman called out, We will eat now, before the chickens run out from the rice! The stringed instrument played on, its performer too rapt to pause. The man with the bamboo pole stepped aside, not taking his expressionless eyes off Cowasjee. * * * Far away, Kananbala heard the faint sound of drums, like a pulse in the night. Another night of waiting. At nine-thirty the neighbours car. Slamming doors. Shouts to the watchman. Ten. The whir of the clock gathering its energies for the long spell of gongs to come. The creaking of trees. A single crow, confused by moonlight. The wind banging a door. Ten-thirty. The owls calling, one to the other, the foxes further away. Then the faint clop of hooves. Closer, the clop of hooves together now with the sound of wheels on tarmac, whip on hide. A tongawallah cursing. Amulya saying, Thats it, no further. His voice too loud. Kananbala dropped her age-softened copy of the Ramayana and went to the window. She could see her husband hunching to release himself from the shelter of the tonga, too tall for its low bonnet. She turned away and returned to the bed, picking up her Ramayana again. When Amulya entered the room and looked around for his slippers, she did not tell him she had put them under the table. When he asked her, Have you eaten? she pretended to be immersed in her book. When he said, Are the children asleep? she replied, Of course. Its so late.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy They only served dinner at ten. They wouldnt let me leave without eating, what do you expect me to do? Nothing, Kananbala said, I know . . . Something caught her eye and she stopped. What is that? What? That? Oh, its a flower. Amulyas voice was muffled beneath the kurta he was pulling off over his head. She could see his vest, striped with ribs, his stomach arcing in. She looked again at the flower, dark purple, wilted. He had placed it under the lamp near the bed. In the light of the lamp she could see one long, black strand of hair stuck to the gummy edge of its stem. I know its a flower, she said. Why have you brought it home? Just wanted to identify it . . . he said, leaving the room. She had often asked him before: were there women at the parties he went to? The hosts wife? Her friends or relatives? Why could she, Kananbala, never be taken? He always laughed with condescension or said, exasperated, I have never met women at these parties, neither do I aspire to. And what of today, the festival at the tribal villagecould she not have been taken? If she were a tribal woman herself, she would have needed no mans permission. Amulya returned to their room with a large, hard-covered book. He sat near the lamp and opened it, then put on his black-framed spectacles. He picked up the flower in one hand, turned the pages of the book with the other, looking once at the pages and once at the flower, saying under his breath, Passiflora of course, but incarnata? Ive never seen this vine in Songarh. Kananbala turned away, lay back against her pillow and shut her eyes. She could hear pages rustling, Amulya murmuring under his breath. She wished with a sudden flaming urge that she could stamp on his spectacles and smash them. Amulya laid the flower against an illustration in the book and whispered, Incarnata, yes, it is incarnata. Roxburgh has to be right. * * * In about 1907, when Amulya moved from Calcutta to Songarh, he could still see the town had been hacked out, maybe a hundred years before, from forest and stone. The town perched on a rocky plateau, at the edge of which he could see, even from the house, a dark strip of forest and the irregular, bluish shadows of the hills beyond. In the distance were broken-down walls of medieval stonethe ruined fort, the garh from which the town took its name. A few walls and one domed watchtower, enough to fuel Amulyas fantasies, could still be discerned in the ruins. In front there was a shallow pool with inlaid stone patterns around its edges. Beyond the fort lay an ancient, dried stream-bed that separated it from the forest and hilly mounds. It was said that an entire city would some day be found buried around the fort. Some claimed Songarh had been one of the centres of Buddhist learning in the ancient past and that the Buddha himself had rested there, under a tree, on one of his journeys. On his first visit to the fort, Amulya saw that there was indeed an ancient, spreading banyan tree with its own jungle of stone-coloured aerial roots. The tree had a knot on its main trunk that in a certain light looked like the face of a meditating man.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy When Amulya brought his family to Songarh, it was no longer a centre of learning, but it had acquired new importance after the discovery by the imperial geologists of ores of mica. There was even more lucrative material below the forests somewhat further away: coal. Among the patchy fields of millet and greens there grew a tiny British colony of people who supervised the coal mines and the nearer mica ores from the salubrious climate of Songarh, which was chilly enough in winter for log fires. Before long the town had a white area near the fort where the handful of miners lived, forming a compact society of their own. Over time, Songarh acquired a main street with a few shops. One of the earliest, Finlays, was run by an enterprising Parsi who supplied the needs of the expatriates for the exotic: coffee, fruit, fish in tins, lace and lingerie, treacle and suet, cigarettes and cheese. Indians went to the shop for fabrics and buttons, medicines and cosmetics, and returned with tins of peach halves, wondering what to do with them. The forest watched. It was well known that leopards wandered its unknown interior. There were stories of tigers and jackals drinking together from streams that ran through it over round, grey and brown pebbles. Cows and goats disappeared, and sometimes dogs. It was useless looking for their remains. Until the mines came, and with them the safety of numbers, nobody from the town was foolhardy enough to venture into the wilderness at the edge of their homes: green, dark, alien, stretching for miles, ending only where the coal mines began. The forest was still the domain of tribal people with skin as shiny and dark as wet stone and straight, wiry bodies. Flowers with frilly petals nestled in the black hair of the women. They were poor; many looked as though they were starving. Yet they kept to the forest, venturing out only occasionally, in groups. Some were forced into the town when the mines gouged out chunks of their forest. They lived in makeshift shanties, working at whatever they could find. Amulya employed many of them. He had heard of Songarh in Calcutta, come on a visit, walked all over the little town and its surrounding countryside, and the knowledge that he would live there came to him like a benediction. Just as some people speak to you immediately without saying a word, and you feel a kinship as real as the touch of a hand, Amulya felt a connection with Songarh. He knew that if he turned away from it then, he would never be able to stop thinking of it, that all his life would feel as though it were being spent away from its core. In Songarh, among people whose language he did not speak, he set up his small factory to manufacture medicines and perfumes out of wild herbs, flowers and leaves. The people of the forest knew where to find wild hibiscus flowers for fragrant and red oil, flowers of the night for perfumes, and the minute herbs for smelly green pastes that could bring stubborn, hard boils to tender explosion overnight. With a persistence he was not aware he possessed, Amulya learned the language of the Santhals, as well as Hindi, and learned enough from them of their plants to be able to expand the range of his products. His relatives in Calcutta regarded Amulya with amused puzzlement and some irritation. He had done nothing he needed to run from, why then the self-imposed exile from a great metropolis into the wilderness? Was there anything in the world Calcutta did not offer a man like him? Submerged just beneath the surface of their talk was the sense that his departure was a scorning of their lives, the redrawing of a pattern that had already been perfected.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy * * *

The house Amulya built in Songarh looked out of place: a tall, many-windowed town house in the middle of scrubland and fields that were sparsely built upon at the time. He designed it with the help of an Anglo-Indian architect trained in Glasgow, whose plan seemed to provide a judicious mix of West and East. The house was to look southward, turning its face from the road. Verandahs all along the southern faade, and the north would have rows of windows. To the west there would be balconies and terraces to let in the setting sun. These balconies would overlook a courtyard next to the kitchen, on the ground floor. The south and the west would be skirted by a garden planted with trees and flowering shrubs. Where other people gave their houses grand names, Amulya gave it a number. Although there was only one other house on that road, he stuck a board into the empty plot that said 3 Dulganj Road in tall black letters. The 3 stood for him and his two sons. A large house, A house for a family to grow in, the architect had said, satisfied, when he had completed his drawings. Despite all the windows and balconies, however, it turned out to be a secretive house once translated to brick and plasternobody appeared at the front door of 3 Dulganj Road, Songarh, on impulse and said, We thought we would call to see you. The northern side that faced the road, with its rows of shuttered windows, seemed to tell visitors that it would be nicer to stand upstairs and watch them go rather than welcome them in. Right across the road was the only other house in the immediate vicinity. It was one of a number of bungalows the mining company had built for its administrative staff, and the name on the gate was Digby Barnum. Mr Barnum was rarely to be seen. The house had a porte- cochre, from the privacy of which every morning Barnum ascended the car that would deposit him where he worked. He left at precisely nine-thirty, looking neither right nor left as his car swept out of his gates and onto the road. Nobody in the neighbourhood had ever caught his eye. Amulya first saw Barnum on one of his early days in Songarh, when he was spending most of his time out in the open getting his house built, hours in the sun watching men work. On one of those days, Barnums car had spluttered in its smooth getaway from the portico and come to a silent standstill only a few yards from the gate. Amulya, waiting on the road for a delivery, observed a man open the door of the car at the back and emerge, muttering English curses. Bloody hell, Barnum said, aiming a kick at the cars bonnet, and then, folding his hands and trying a different tack, Please, you ruddy jalopy, just this once . . . In the bright morning sun, his skin grew more vivid every minute. Strands of hair stuck to his balding head in damp stripes. His cheeks shone in the heat, and bright pink folds of flesh ringed his neck. Amulya turned away despite the temptation to stare. The driver disappeared under the bonnet while Barnum got behind the wheel to turn on the ignition. It would not start. The driver brought out a crank, stuck it into the front of the car and began to turn it as Barnum stamped down on the accelerator. The car cleared its hoarse throat a few times, but there was no roar that held. Barnum got out of the car again and stared worriedly at the empty road. He had given no sign of noticing Amulyas presence. Amulya, knowing the mining office was a few miles away, on the other side of the town, allowed himself an invisible smirk.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy But now there was a sound that made Barnum look up. In the distance, unmistakeably, the clopping of hooves. Amulya stole a look at Barnums expectant face, relishing the predictable way it fell when the man saw where the clopping came from: not a tonga, but a ramshackle cart laden with bricks. Barnum waited as the cart emptied its bricks, the men working slowly in the heat, disguising lethargy as method. The driver had given up cranking the car and stood slouching in the shade of a bright orange bougainvillea. Barnum rushed into his house and out again. He did not look at Amulya but cast an irritable glance at the labourers who were taking their time, and at the stringy horse snuffling inside a nosebag. Somewhere a cow-bell tinkled, the leisure of the sound at odds with Barnums snarling face and tetchy movements. Juldi karo, he yelled at the labourers. Hurry up, you buggers. Empty out this ruddy twopenny jam tin, juldi karo. Eventually, the cart was empty and the workmen turned away. Perched on bits of half- built house they lit their beedies with sighs of exhaustion. Amulya paid the malingerers no attention for a change, fascinated by Barnums portly efforts to heave himself into the three- sided cart through the rear. He had to sit on the dusty floor where the bricks had been, his back to the driver, trousered legs and shiny shoes dangling from the cart, facing Amulya and the labourers but managing not to meet anyones eye. The cart returned slowly townward. A few days later, as Amulya watched a well being dug into what would be his garden, a servant from Barnums house came to him and shouted above the thud of the heavy hammer and the loud, chorused chant with which the labourers timed their digging, Sahib has forbidden this! What? Amulya said, trying to hear above the din. He shouted to the labourers, Wait. Stop! Sahib says no noisy work in the afternoon. He comes home for his sleep and lunch. No work from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Strutting with borrowed British authority, the servant gave Amulya a conclusive look and was gone before he could react. Amulya seethed at the servants departing back, filled with impotent rage, knowing that he would have to obey. When finally they occupied their new house and Kananbala wondered aloud one day if it was rude not to call on the neighbours at least once, Amulya snapped, No need. What an idea! Have you forgotten theyre British? To them were no more than uncouth junglees. Amulya was the only Indian to have built his home in that area, in the wilderness near the miners dwellings and fox lairs, far away from the bustle of the main market, from the drums of Ram Navami, the speeches and tom-toms of patriots, the nasal calls of the maulvi, the discordant bursts of trumpet music at wedding processions, the sparklers and explosions of Diwali. He heard these noises all day at the factory. As his daily tonga clattered him towards his home each evening, he waited for that miraculous moment when the shouting town would slide behind, replaced by dark trees and an echoing stillness broken only by calls from the forest and birdsong at dusk. Except now, these past few months, scars had appeared on the smooth surface of his contentment. He had begun to recognise that he was considered an outsider in his very own Dulganj Road, and he knew that while his yearning for isolation was cause enough for him to want to remain an outsider, for his wife it was a different story.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION Set in the outskirts of a small town in Bengal, in the mid-twentieth century, An Atlas of Impossible Longing is a multigenerational novel that weaves together a familys story of romance, abandonment, forgiveness, and desire. Told in three powerful parts, the book explores what it means to live with the ghosts of the past, deal with an ever-changing present, and strive toward a blissful future that always seems just out of reach. TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. The silence that to Amulya meant repletion locked Kananbala within a bell jar she felt she could not prise open for air. The move from busy Calcutta to secluded Songarh is lifechanging for both Amulya and Kananbala, though in very different ways. Discuss how each is affected by the change. 2. He would look at [the plants] tenderly, wanting to stroke and pat them . . . He had created a garden where there had been wilderness. Describe Amulyas relationship to nature throughout the book. How does he treat the plants in his garden? Similarly, how did you interpret his fascination with the young dancers Incarnata flower in the first chapter? 3. The lions roar was a secret she could not share with anybody else. The others slept on, oblivious to the throbbing wakefulness of the jungle. Consider the roar of the lion that Kananbala hears periodically throughout the novel. Do you think Kananbala is hearing the roar of an actual lion, or do you think, in her madness, she is imagining the noise? What could the noise mean? 4. Marriage can be both a blessing and a struggle, as the married couples in this novel exemplify. Review the various married couples involved in the story and discuss: Which marriage do you think works the best? Which is the unhealthiest? Why? 5. Bitterly she muttered, Gods ways are strange, that He should give children to those who dont care for them and leave me childless. Manjula is seldom portrayed as a sympathetic character in the novel, yet her yearning for the child she can never have often gives her a certain vulnerability. How do you view Manjula? Does your opinion of her change over the course of the book? 6. Kananbala and Mrs. Barnum share a bond from the moment Mrs. Barnum initiates the first wave. Does their relationship change after Kananbala witnesses Mr. Barnums murder? If so, how? Do you think Kananbala and Mrs. Barnums relationship at all

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy contributes to Mrs. Barnums fondness for Bakul and Mukunda? 7. The theme of man versus nature cuts through the novel, particularly when Bikash Babu laments the fall of his house to the rising river: The arrogance, he repeats. What emotions do you think he is feeling at that moment? At what point do you think he realizes that nature has truly won? 8. Mukundas unknown caste gives him both trouble and freedom throughout the novel. In which ways does it help him? Hurt him? At any point, do you think he is treated unfairly because of his indefinite lineage? 9. When Mukunda buys the house in Songarh, he believes he will finally be able to live a fulfilled life. Ultimately, what choices has he made by buying the house? What does he lose, and what does he gain? 10. The pull of forbidden love is strong for many of the characters. Which characters resist this pull, and which seem to welcome it? Are any of them successful in refusing to succumb to forbidden love? If so, who? 11. If anyone in his family or neighbourhood got to know, there would be turmoil; Meera would certainly be ostracized, and perhaps he would be too. Consider the strain put on the characters by societal expectations. Do you think her certain exclusion from society is the only reason Meera runs from her attraction to Nirmal? 12. The above quote suggests a double standard for women and men in these types of situations; Meera will certainly be ostracized, while Nirmal may only perhaps suffer societys disdain. How is this double standard a reflection of society, and what is your reaction to it? Do you see a double standard for women and men elsewhere in the novel? 13. Noorie the Parrot plays a small yet significant role in the book, and in the hearts of those who closely encounter her. What does she represent for Mukunda, the man who threatens to make parrot stew of her? To his wife, who sets the bird free to fend for itself? For Chacha and Chachi, who return to Calcutta to find that Noorie is no longer there? 14. After finishing the book, turn back to the beginning and reread the opening Prologue. Discuss: How has your interpretation of the opening paragraphs changed? Does the Prologue evoke different emotions now that you are more acquainted with the house and the river? 15. During the massive displacement of the Indian Partition, more than 100,000 people died. Do you see ways in which these events mirror other events taking place in the world today?

An Atlas of Impossible Longing, by Anuradha Roy ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB 1. With the members of your reading group, create a family tree for the characters in the novel. You can use this diagram as a resource during your discussion. 2. Mukunda fondly remembers Chachas inability to buy anything but books when he comes into a bit of spare money. Chacha appreciates everything from the beautiful engraving on the title page to the smell of the pages of a secondhand book. Take a trip to a bookstore or secondhand book sale in your community as Chacha might have done. 3. Meeras favorite hobby is taking care of the young pups she finds by the Songarh ruin. She also enjoys sketching them, the ruin, and the people she loves. Find a person, place, or animal that interests you and sketch that subject in two ways: how the subject truly lookslike Nirmal would request if you were sketching the ruinand how the subject makes you feel. 4. Anuradha Roys characters live in an ever-changing India, and the novel often touches upon the goings-on of the time period. Using the Internet or your local library as a resource, learn more about Indias history in the first half of the twentieth century. 5. The symphony Finlandia by Sibelius plays a part in the book: Makunda hears the symphony in school, the flute melody in it entrances Mukunda when Bakul plays it for him, and he plays it himself on later in the book. Find a recording of symphony and try to locate the movement with the flute that Bakul plays. With your group, discuss what Mukunda may have been thinking or feeling when he heard the melody, and the emotions it brings up in you.

Reading Group Tips and Resources

A story is always better if you have someone to share it with. Enter the book club. Its your place to meet with friends and talk books. Like stories themselves, book clubs are completely unique. Remember, there are no rules! Whether you are starting, joining, or refreshing your current book club, we hope these tips, reminders, hints, and resources help liven up the discussion.

The Club

If you are starting a new club, consider what kind of atmosphere you and your club want to cultivate. The tone of your group is just as important as the setting. Do you want your group to be more academic in nature or more lighthearted and social? Setting some ground rules for your meeting can help make the discussion and gathering run smoothly. Here are some questions to consider when forming your book club: Do you want to designate leaders for your group discussions? If so, what will the group leader be in charge of? How often will the group meet? What time do you want to meet? Establishing a set time and date provides consistency. Where will you meet? Do you want to change the location of each group meeting? How big do you want your group to be? Usually, smaller groups (some where between 6 and 8 people) work best, because they allow everyone a chance to join in on the conversation. However, large groups allow for greater diversity. Why do you want to start a book club? What do you and your members hope to get out of your book club? What type of books do you want to read in your group? Do you want to focus on certain genres, bestsellers, or a specific theme? Or mix it up each month?

Getting the details straight will set the foundation for a long, prosperous, and chatty book group!

The Book

So many books, so little time! Choosing books for your book club may seem like a daunting task, but dont fret. You may want to consider selecting titles by genre or by a certain author or by themei.e., a specific time period, character, or setting. If you and your group are having trouble picking your next book selection, you could: Check the bestseller lists, from the weekly New York Times Book Review to the IndieBound Bestseller list to USA Todays Bestselling Books! Look up recent award-winning titles, such as the National Book Awards, the Man Booker Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN, the New York Times Best Books of the Year, or the Orange Prize for fiction. Listen for recommendationsask your coworkers, friends, local librarian, bookseller, or family members what they suggest reading next. You can get global recommendations by signing on to Twitter and following the #fridayreads conversation every Friday. Visit ReadingGroups.SimonandSchuster.com for new (and old favorite!) book club recommendations. And of course, try reading one of the titles featured in Wanderlust!

If you and your group still cant agree on a pick, try some of these fun techniques: Have each member in your club bring a top five list of books to read to your first meeting and vote on the suggestionsthe title with the most votes wins. Pay tribute to your playground days and simply take turns! Let the host or discussion leader choose the title or decide who gets to pick by order of birthdays, alphabetically, etc. Leave it up to book club chancehave each member write down a suggested book, put the titles in a bowl, and draw your next selection. Seasonalize your book club choicesfor instance, pick a title about African American heritage in honor of Black History Month in February or read an Irish author in March for St. Patricks Day.

The Meeting

Mapping out the meeting logistics will make the actual meeting all the more enjoyable. Here are some details to consider when planning your book club meeting: Where will the group meet? Will you be serving food and drink? Do you want to establish a period of social time before starting the discussion?

If you want to change up the feel of your book club, try some of these meeting locations: A restaurant or bar Your local library A coffee shop A park (weather permitting!) Your local bookstore A museum Your living room!

The Discussion

Youve read the booknow it is time to start talking! A lot of book group titles come with a set of questions for discussion. If the reading group guide is not included in the book itself, try visiting the publishers website to see if you can find the accompanying guide online. Consider sending out the discussion questions in advance so all of the members will be prepared to chat it up. Included below are some ever-green questions that apply to any book and are guaranteed to jumpstart your conversation: Describe the character development. Which character(s) did you identify with? Did your opinions about any of the characters change? How? What kind of part did the setting play in the narrative? What was the dialogue like? How do the characters speak to one another? What is the voice or tone like? How would you characterize the authors use of language? Did the books characters, story, or style remind you of another book? If there was one thing you took away from the book, what was it? How would you sum up the book in one word? What is the significance of the title? How did the setting and time period influence the novel? Could the story have taken place anywhere else? Or at any other time? Did you have a favorite passage or quote from the book? If so, share it with your group.

If some members of your group are reading e-books, while some readers are reading print editions, getting on the same page (literally) may seem to be an issue when trying to reference page numbers and cite favorite parts. Not to worry! In most e-readers, you can search for occurrences of words and phrases. In most e-readers, page numbers are available in addition to the progress bar. Remember that the page numbering in an e-book depends on the size and font style of the text. Still looking for ways to enhance you book club meeting and to keep the discussion going? Try some of these tips: Have each member come up with an alternate title for the book. Go around the group and explain your new title choice.

Start a blog or a Facebook page for your book club. Have members submit three questions by e-mail to the group host or leader prior to your meeting, creating an instant, personalized reading group guide. Make a book club recipe box! Have each member write notes, questions, thoughts, and opinions on a note card to save in a recipe box. Get on the same page (literally)! Have each member read the same book and make different notations as you read. When it is your turn to read, you will also be reading your members notes and questions, creating a read-as-you-go book club experience. Bring the book to your meeting and discuss the experience of sharing one book and reading each others thoughts. Decide on one question that will be asked at each book club meeting. When you answer this staple question, be sure to discuss how your answer has changed since the last meeting and since the last title you read. Have each member select a character name out of a hat and act out a favorite passage in the book. Keep a book club log! Bring a notebook or journal to your book club gettogether to keep track of the book read, what was discussed, your club rating, where your group met, what kind of wine was served, etc. Visit the authors website to learn more about their background. Some times authors are available to call in to book club meetings. Authors will also often provide contact information on their websites or on their publishers website. While inviting the author to your book group alters the discussion, it is a unique experience and one your group may want to consider. Check your local listings to see what authors are on tour and plan to attend a book-signing or reading as a group. Bring your book to life by taking a related field trip with your club members to someplace that echoes the theme or setting of your recent readmaybe its volunteering at an animal shelter, taking painting classes, or going on a bike ride!

Most important, sit back, relax, and enjoy both the discussion and the company of your book club members.

The Extras

The web is a great place to find book club resources. For more book club tips, suggestions, guides, and information, try visiting the following online book-specific communities: ReadingGroupGuides.com Shelfari.com LibraryThing.com GoodReads.com BookMovement.com ReadingGroupChoices.com FridayReads.com

Happy Book Clubbing!

Be sure to visit ReadingGroups.SimonandSchuster.com for more discussion questions, tips for enhancing your book club, excerpts, interviews with the author, exclusive video, and more!