Simply from Scratch

By Alicia Bessette and A. (Author) Bessette

Book Overview

Read Alicia Bessette's blogs and view other content on the Penguin Community. Alicia Bessette writes with compassion and tenderness to illuminate the many unexpected ways people save each others' lives every day-often without even knowing it. Poignant, bittersweet, and strikingly honest, Simply from Scratch is a radiant celebration of friendship and the strength of the human spirit. Rose-Ellen ("Zell") Carmichael Roy wears her late husband Nick's camouflage apron even when she's not in the kitchen. That's her widow style. 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, to have begun to move on with her life. But Zell is still unable to enter her attic, which is full of Nick memories. She hasn't even turned on her oven because cooking was Nick's chore. That is, until she decides to enter the first annual Desserts that Warm the Soul baking contest, hoping to donate the grand prize to Katrina survivors in Nick's memory. Meanwhile, Zell's nine-year-old neighbor, 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 the woman who abandoned her so many years ago. When an embarrassing baking mishap brings Zell and Ingrid together, they form an unlikely friendship that will alter both of their lives forever. Together, and with the help of a lively and loveable cast of friends and family, Zell and Ingrid embark on winning the Desserts that Warm the Soul contest - and learn that through the many sorrows and joys of life, with a little bit of flour and a pinch of love, anything is possible. Watch a Video

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525951822
• ISBN13: 9780525951827
• Release Date: August 2010
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 313 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Glad I read this one, shows the passage of grief and love

I had a hard time coming up with a title for this review. How do you sum up a book about a woman whose husband died while trying to help out people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? How do you describe that his wife has decided to enter a baking contest, although she is far from an expert cook, because the prize money is $20,000 - the exact amount her husband wanted to provide to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina? As the book opens, Zell (short for Rose-Allen) is going on with her life but she is on the passage of grief and not handling some things very well. She can't go up in the attic, has trouble opening the last present her husband sent her and is also having issues with her heart (they started before her husband left for New Orleans). This isn't a book which throws readers into the depths of grief from the start. Zell has a certain determination to try and get by but her pain still arrives when memories hit her. Like many of those suffering from grief, her memories are intermingled with her new life, one without her husband, Nick. He is almost like an extra character since his letters are woven into the fabric of this novel. I was a little bit surprised that the cover didn't show Zell in a camouflage apron because she wears it as a sort of homage to her husband. It used to be his. But perhaps the cover is supposed to indicate that she has moved on. Since this tale is partly about baking, there is a recipe at the end of the book. I haven't tried it yet so I can't note anything about whether it is delicious or not. I enjoyed this novel very much and couldn't stop reading it. At the same time, I don't think this writer has yet tapped the promise she so clearly shows in her writing. I wasn't so riveted by this book that it will continue to haunt me. However, it reveals how Zell finds new connections around her and is a hopeful tale about moving on after the loss of a husband, partly with new people who come along, including a motherless child named Ingrid.