THE TRANSATLANTIC BOOK CLUB
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
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Harper Perennial
11/10/2020
Fiction
Paperback, 384 pages
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Beloved author Felicity Hayes-McCoy returns with an enchanting, cozy new novel about residents of Ireland's Finfarran Peninsula who set up a Skype book club with the little American town of Resolve, where generations of Finfarran's emigrants have settled.
Cassie Fitzgerald, who has traveled from Canada to cheer up her recently widowed gran, persuades the local library to set up a Skype book club. But when the club decides to read a detective novel, old conflicts on both sides of the ocean are exposed and hidden love affairs come to light. As secrets emerge, Cassie fears she may have done more harm than good.
"I was utterly charmed—a pitch-perfect delight.”
-author Marian Keyes
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Dear Reader,
Mostly I write in a stone house on a mountainside on the west coast of Ireland. One of my favorite things to do is to wander into the garden and harvest vegetables, or drift into the kitchen and bake bread.
If you’re a writer, taking time to drift matters. It allows space for ideas to come together and if, while your mind plays with words, your hands are measuring out, mixing or kneading, you can produce a cake or casserole as well as a well-turned paragraph or chapter. And, as in the Finfarran books, gardening and cooking can often creep into your storylines!
I hope you’ll enjoy The Transatlantic Book Club. It’s about families, friendship and reaching out across distances to people we love and cherish. Now, more than ever, those things are important. And so are sharing stories, food and fun.
Warm wishes from Ireland,
Felicity
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THE TRANSATLANTIC BOOK CLUB
BOOK CLUB MENU AND RECIPE
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In the Finfarran novels, which are set in contemporary rural Ireland, two of the younger characters are cousins who run a delicatessen specializing in organic delights like sun dried tomatoes, olives, salami and other antipasti, all of which would have been exotic to their grandmothers’ generation. But even librarian Hanna Casey’s formidable mother Mary approves of the girls’ standards, and buys their pastries to take to tea with her best friend and sparring partner, Pat.
So I’d begin my menu with a platter of delicious starters from the deli. For a main course I’d embrace traditional Irish fare and offer the bacon and cabbage served in the Shamrock Club in the little upstate New York town of Resolve. It’s a dish of tender boiled bacon, cabbage, potatoes and parsley sauce. Pat considered it boring when she went to work in the United States in the mid-1960s, but she loved it when she got there because it reminded her of home. It’s also a favorite of Finfarran’s local builder, Fury O’Shea, whose dog, The Divil, enjoys his cabbage with gravy. I could finish the menu with one of the deli’s luscious spiced cheesecakes but, on second thoughts, I might go for Mary Casey’s Battenberg cake. Or a plum compote made by the wife of the cross man in the library. Or Pat’s famous berry Pavlova, served with whipped cream.
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Irish Soda Bread: This loaf, often known as “a cake of bread”, is one of Ireland’s staples. Because the ingredients are so few and the rise is vital, people can get obsessive about which kind of flour gives the best result, and whether or not a handful of oats should be tossed in with the whole wheat flour. It really depends on the kind of flour available in your area, and, of course, on the time of year, the speed with which you bring the dough together, and even the humidity in your kitchen. All of which offer plenty of opportunities for argument and appraisal at events like the library bake sale in The Transatlantic Book Club.
Felicity Hayes-McCoy
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©Copyright 2020 The Book Club Cookbook |
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