NEW RELEASE
Simply From Scratch - Alicia Bessette (2010)
aka A Pinch of Love
Zell is still recovering from the sudden death of her husband Nick, a photographer who died during a post-Katrina relief mission. Through a disastrous cooking experiment, she meets her next-door-neighbour, nine-year-old Ingrid, who believes celebrity chef Polly Pinch is her mother. With an eye on the $20,000 prize money (the amount Nick wanted to raise for the New Orleans victims), the two join forces to try to win her baking competition. This mixes the ingredients of a woman looking for a reason to live again with a girl desperate for female company. Stir in some quirky small townsfolk, a much-loved dog and some flashbacks to when Nick was alive and you get a debut novel that's full of warmth and soul.
Simply from Scratch, by Alicia Bessette (one of this year's Debutante Ball writers), is the story of a depressed widow, a lonely girl and a baking contest. Released in the US as A Pinch of Love, the summary says: "It's been over a year since Nick died tragically during a post-Katrina relief mission in New Orleans. Long enough, according to the grief pamphlets, for Rose-Ellen "Zell" Carmichael Roy to have begun moving on with her life. But she hasn't even turned on her oven because cooking was Nick's chore. That is, until she decides to enter celebrity chef Polly Pinch's first annual Desserts that Warm the Soul baking contest, hoping to win the $20,000 grand prize to donate to Katrina survivors in Nick's honour. Meanwhile, nine-year-old Ingrid Knox is learning to cope with the loneliness of growing up without a mother. With an imagination as big as her heart, Ingrid treasures her doting father but begins to plot how she will meet her mother, whom she fiercely believes is Polly Pinch. When an embarrassing baking mishap brings Zell and Ingrid together, they form an unlikely friendship that will alter both of their lives forever." Simply from Scratch is out in August.