Michelle Hoover will read this week.
SPOKEN WORD
Old true stories made new
Michelle Hoover will read this week.
Michelle Hoover was 22 when her mother handed her an antique journal belonging to her great-grandmother Melva Current, a farm woman born and raised in Iowa. The stories in the 15 delicate pages inspired Hoover’s new novel, “The Quickening’’ (Other Press), in which she combines some of her great-grandmother’s real-life stories with fictional ones.
Enidina Current, the narrator who is based on Hoover’s great-grandmother, and Mary Morrow live on neighboring farms in the early 1900s. While Enidina happily works the land, Mary’s cosmopolitan inclinations are at odds with her role of farmer’s wife. The women need each other’s friendship to survive, but as the Great Depression deepens, the balance of their lives tips, threatening both families.
Hear Hoover this evening at 7 at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline.
COOKBOOK EXPLORER
Novelist Allegra Goodman, a Cambridge native and creative writing teacher at Boston University, believes many people, including herself, are fascinated with reading cookbooks, but rarely try out the recipes. “They don’t actually cook themselves,’’ Goodman said.With this in mind, she visited the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, at Harvard University, which she said has one of the finest cookbook collections in the world. Its “treasures’’ inspired Goodman to write her new novel, “The Cookbook Collector’’ (Dial Press).
“I thought about the larger phenomenon of collecting and acquiring material things,’’ Goodman said.
The novel follows Jessamine and Emily, two very different sisters whose lives are altered after Jessamine, a part-time worker at a bookstore, becomes fascinated with a rare collection of cookbooks. She enjoys their strange, gothic drawings and is captivated by the collection’s backstory: the previous owner’s obsession with a mysterious woman. Her discovery in the pages of the book leads her on a fantastic journey.
Goodman will discuss and sign her novel tomorrow evening at 7 at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.
PAST BECOMES PRESENT
In “This Must Be the Place’’ (Henry Holt and Co.), a first novel by Boston-based Kate Racculia, Arthur Rook is a man on a mission. After his wife, Amy, a special-effects creator, is killed in a freak accident on a movie set, he finds a shoebox containing some of her memorabilia. An unsent postcard written 16 years ago addressed to Mona Jones, Amy’s best friend from childhood and owner of a boarding house in New York, sparks Arthur’s quest to explore Amy’s past.Arthur sets out to meet Mona; gradually he finds more answers than he bargained for. “He’s discovering the human pieces that [Amy] left behind,’’ Racculia said.
Racculia used her own childhood interests — music, art, and ’80s fantasy movies — as references in her novel. “I feel like they really helped shape my personality,’’ she said.
Racculia reads and signs her book Thursday evening at 8 at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
