On Second Thought

No Place Like Home

By Barbara Samuel

Publisher: Barbara Samuel

E-book Release Date: October 28, 2014

(Originally released 2002 by Ballantine Books) 

“The April I was thirteen, I went to sleep a good Catholic schoolgirl, and woke up the next morning burning. The transition was like the flip of a coin, and made me as dizzy as an airborne dime.” So begins the story of Jewel Sabatino. Her mother told her it was puberty, a temporary stage, but the burning lasted through her seventeenth summer when she met a guy in a band who took her away from Pueblo, Colorado.  Billy Jake, her non-husband, gave her a son and almost twelve years before the drugs first seduced and eventually killed him.

More than twenty years after she ran away, Jewel is returning to her hometown to take up residence in the house her great-aunt left her. She faces her homecoming with mixed emotions. Her seventeen-year-old son Shane, who inherited his father’s musical gift as well as his looks and charm, is not happy to leave his friends and the music scene in New York City to live in some Podunk town for which his mother has never had a kind word.  Her best friend, Michael Shaunnessey, has AIDS, and Jewel knows she is bringing him to Pueblo to die. She is also uncertain of her reception from her large, closely knit, extended Sicilian family, particularly her father who has not spoken to her since she refused to return to Pueblo with him two decades ago.

Jewel, a culinary expert, runs a pie-baking business from her home rather than looking for work because working on her own allows her to be there to care for Michael. Shane is pushing the boundaries and pulling typical adolescent tricks, but the family, except for her father, welcomes Jewel, Shane, and Michael with open arms. Jewel discovers that the things she disliked about Pueblo at seventeen look quite different when forty is staring at her in the mirror. When Malachi Shaunnessey arrives to spend time with Michael, Jewel’s life gets even more complicated. Not only is he another heart-stopping bad boy on a motorcycle, but he is also a wanderer who travels the world with nothing to tie him down, and Jewel has discovered a need for roots. He may stir her libido and set her dreaming, but is he just another heartbreak waiting to happen?

I love Barbara Samuel’s books. Whatever the name on the cover, I know this writer is going to give me sensory prose so rich that the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch of her fictional world are as real as the Georgia rain and robins’ morning song outside my door. I also know her books are going to pack an emotional punch that hits my heart. I know that her characters will be fully human in body, mind, and spirit. I know the stories she tells will make me feel and think. Of all her books, this one is my favorite. I love it because the story encompasses all of Jewel’s roles—caretaker, mother, daughter, sister, and lover.  I love Malachi. I admit I have a weakness for tall heroes with sexy voices, and Malachi qualifies on both counts. He is six feet, six inches tall, and Samuel describes his voice as “devastating . . . baritone, but laced with a drawl as slow as a Southern river.”

I love that Jewel’s relationship with her sisters moves me with their truth and authenticity.

           

The thing is, there is no more complicated relationship on the planet than sisters. I completely adore them. They completely drive me insane. I can't imagine my life without them and have often said I hope I'm the first one to die because I don't want to have to bury them. I think it would kill me.

I love it because No Place Like Home is a tale of healing, forgiveness, and acceptance, a story about holding on and letting go, things that touch me in deeply personal ways. The novel won the RITA for Best Contemporary Single Title. It was also named RWA’s Favorite Book of the Year and one of Library Journal’s Top Five. But those accolades mean less to me than the fact that it is one of my all-time favorite books. My print copy is tattered from rereading, so I was thrilled to find the digital version on sale recently. I reread it as soon as I downloaded it. Based on my reading journals, it was my eighth time to read it, and I may have missed recording a reread or two. After all these raves, do I really need to say that this book has my highest, most enthusiastic recommendation?

~Janga

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Today's Special - - Barbara Samuel

It's our pleasure to welcome Barbara Samuel to The Romance Dish today!  Barbara has visited us before in one of her other personae (Barbara O'Neal) so those of you who visited with her then know you're in for a treat today.  A winner of multiple RITA® awards, Barbara has published more than 38 books.  Regardless of sub-genre or pseudonym, Barbara's books regularly win rave reviews and new readers alike.  Please give Barbara a warm welcome!

Decadent and Delectable Southern Cooking

I was raised by Southern cooks who fed us things like rich, cheesy baked macaroni and cheese, biscuits smothered with sausage gravy, green beans cooked with bacon fat, pecan pie.  My grandpa had a restaurant for awhile, and he was the short-order cook. When I married, my ex and I joked that we were first-generation Northerners, and one of our common grounds was food.  He was (is!) an excellent cook who specialized in fried pork chops, a super-secret barbeque sauce that he guarded like it was a pound of select sapphires.

So it is no surprise that my Southern-set novel, The Sleeping Night, is permeated with food.  It is about two deeply lonely souls who connect through letters during World War II, and fall in love, then have to grapple with their forbidden love with Isaiah returns home for what he thinks is only a brief visit. When he finds his old childhood friend in dire need of assistance, he can’t turn his back on her—and that’s where the trouble starts, of course. 

During the war, both Angel and Isaiah are hungry. A lot.  He’s dealing with soldier’s rations and the extreme rationing in England, then the ever-dwindling resources as the Army advanced across Europe.  He asks her for a cake story. This is what she writes:

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March 3, 1944

Dear Isaiah,

A Cake Story

      First, I have to put on an apron. It’s my favorite, white with a bib to keep my top from getting all splattered, and little cherries embroidered all over it. I tie it and turn on the radio because I like to dance along as I measure things. I’m flipping through my best recipes, trying to decide what you’d like best. I consider chocolate, but as I recall, you’re a pineapple upside down cake man, so that’s the receipt I pull out. 

      They just had some fresh pineapples at the market downtown, and I picked up a beauty—I can smell it right now, all sweet and juicy. When I slice off the outside, juice pools on the counter, and I’ve just got to have a little slice to test it, so I cut off a nice juicy sliver, all yellow and glistening, and pop it in my mouth, and it’s like an explosion of sunshine, all over my tongue and down my throat. It’s going to make a very good cake. I slice off rounds of it and put them in the bottom of a big cast iron skillet. I sprinkle it with brown sugar, which sticks to my fingers, and I lick that off, too, and the flavor of brown sugar with slightly tart pineapple makes the saliva glands in my mouth pinch just a tiny bit. Over the sugar and fruit goes a layer of butter. It’s my special trick that butter—I slice it real, real thin and lay it down like leaves over the sugar.

       Then I make the cake, which is a simple thing, just flour and sugar and eggs and baking powder and a tiny bit of vanilla all blending together to make a golden batter. I beat into a nice airy froth, and then pour it over the pineapple, and pop it in the oven. Of course, then, I have to lick the spoon, which has sweet, sloppy batter all over it. Some gets on my chin, but I don’t care. It’s delicious. If you were here, I’d let you have the bowl, but since you’re not, I scoop the batter out with the spoon until there’s nothing left.
 

       Meanwhile, that cake is baking, filling the air with that sugar scent, and I know the pineapple is getting all caramelized, the juice from the pineapple mixing with the sugar and the butter to make a hard, sweet crust.  When the cake is baked, I take it out and let it cool just a little bit, then I put a plate on top of the pan, and flip it. This takes some doing, because that pan is pretty heavy, and I want it to land on the plate just right.  So I wrap the handle up with a dishtowel and pick it up and turn it over and feel the cake settle.  This is the test.  Ever so easy, I pull on the pan, and there, on that crystal plate, is the pineapple upside down cake. I slice a piece for you, a big ole piece, with rings of pineapple soaking into the cake, and dark brown sugar caramelized on the edges, and the smell of heaven in every single molecule.

Enjoy it.

Angel

When he comes home and there are so many things against them, Angel wants to break down the wall of chilly civility Isaiah has erected.  She bakes him that very cake. He is fixing her roof and can’t help but smell the caramelizing sugar, smells the pineapple and the cake baking, and finds himself at the back door, asking for a glass of water.  He cannot resist. In the end, even if it might mean they both are killed for it, he cannot resist her.

The Sleeping Night is a powerful novel of forbidden love.  It is intense, dark, and ultimately triumphant, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. 

We’re hoping to spread the word about this book, and to that end, we’re having a contest.   To win a chance at a gift basket that includes a cast iron skillet (without which no Southern cook could function properly) a vintage cookbook, and a collection of recipes from Angel’s favorites, (including her special pineapple upside down cake!) post a review or a Tweet or other social media.  For more, go here. 

Enjoy!


Do you have a favorite cake recipe that makes your mouth water, or has someone in your life made a cake you could die for?  What are your regional favorites?  

The Secret of Great Reading!

by Anna Campbell

You know you're in the hands of an extraordinary writer when she changes the way you view your personal environment. Barbara O'Neal (and her other incarnations as Ruth Wind and Barbara Samuel) is just such a writer.

After finishing THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING yesterday, I went for a walk and I found myself noticing new and vivid details of my surroundings. The stark white of a gum tree trunk or the rich red of a lovely flowering bottlebrush around the corner from me. It's not that I don't see this stuff normally. But somehow the intense sensory experience of reading Barbara's work had flowed over to freshen up my ability to see what was around me.

Barbara O'Neal is an intensely sensual writer. Her books are full of the things that make life richer. The taste of a good meal. The scent of mountain air. The lovely silky feel of a just-groomed dog (more about the dogs later). How wonderful it feels to stretch out on a comfortable bed after you've done a long, long hike. Hmm, perhaps I'm not QUITE so familiar with that one!

Something as simple as the plain adobe house with blue-painted window frames that the heroine moves into in this story fills your mind with such an evocative picture, it's like you're there. It's an amazing gift. Reading a Barbara O'Neal is like sitting down to an exquisite banquet - and to get the full experience, you won't gobble it all down in a hurry, you'll pause and savor the different flavors and how they come together to make a delicious whole. To emphasize the comparison with food, a lot of the chapters end with luscious recipes from the cafe that features in the book, 100 Breakfasts. I wasn't tempted to get out the frying pan, but I sure was tempted to get on a plane and try and find this place and order about ten breakfasts in a row!

THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING is her second Barbara O'Neal book (I loved her first, THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS too). It's probably more women's fiction than romance, although there is a very strong, very sexy romance included in the story.

Tessa Harlow comes to the New Mexico town of Las Ladronas after tragedy and injury. Las Ladronas has painful memories for her too - as a child, she almost drowned in the river and as a result, she has suffered memory loss that has haunted her all her life.

Over the coming weeks, she'll discover those lost years, she'll learn about family, and she'll discover a new love with the gorgeous local Vince Grasso. She'll encounter people who will change her life. Not just Vince, but many people who knew her as a child, Vita who runs the famous cafe 100 Breakfasts, Annie who is a parolee with a tragic past, and Vince's three daughters. She'll reassess her relationship with her father and she'll learn what she wants to make of her life.

And she'll meet lots of dogs! Dogs populate this book and they're all marvelous. Personally I love animals in books and I know I'm not alone. Favorites in THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING include Vince's rather nutty Akita mix Pedro and the stray collie pup who Tessa eventually adopts. You'll fall in love with both of these dogs, believe me!

This is such a lovely, life-affirming read. And the writing is just gorgeous. It's the kind of book where the characters linger in your mind long after you close the cover on the last page. Highly recommended.