Table of Contents: From Breakfast With Anita Diamant to Dessert With James Patterson - a Generous Helping of Recipes, Writings and Insights From Today's Bestselling Authors (13 page)

Edith Sanchez

SELECTED WOEKS

The 19
^th
Wife
(2008)

Pasadena
(2002)

The Rose City
(2001)

The Danish Girl
(2000)

Inspiration
Several years ago I was talking to a professor of nineteenth-century women's history. In this conversation she mentioned someone called the nineteenth wife. I said, The nineteenth what? Who was this nineteenth wife? And what kind of life did she lead? These are the questions that started me on the long, long process of writing
The 19th Wife
.

Readers Should Know
If you're a dog person, you'll understand this. If you're not, you'll find this corny, so forgive me. My dog, Elektra, helps me write. She's ten now, and for the last decade she's always been at my feet as I've written my books. She's so present in my writing process that she worked her way into my last novel. One of the characters in
The 19th Wife
has a dog named Elektra who is shamelessly based on the real Elektra. To my great delight, Elektra now has fans.

Readers Frequently Ask

Q:
What are you working on next?

A:
Unfortunately my answer is a little lame because I don't like to talk about a book while I'm writing it. I can tell you it's a new novel set in the recent past about a family you might have heard of.

Influences on My Writing

The Brontë sisters because they revolutionized the novel and wrote books that captivated my imagination when I was young, precisely when I needed books to take me away.

E.M. Forster because his novels are both serious and ironic, often simultaneously, and because he bravely wrote gay men into literature.

Leo Tolstoy because everything a novelist needs to know can be found in his work.

Makes 3–4 servings

Pioneers learned to make do with what they had in nineteenth-century Utah. The high desert climate was harsh (hot in summer, frigid in winter) and the natural vegetation was scant. When I was researching
The 19th Wife
, I encountered many mentions of peaches in women's letters and diaries. The abundant sunshine and dry air were ideal for fruit and nut orchards, and many pioneer women had at least one or two peach trees on their property. These women proved ingenious at using all of a tree's fruit, never letting a peach go to waste. Of course, they made peach pies, jams, and preserves, but they also made peach sauce, which was used as a sauce or added to other recipes as a sweetener. I found a number of references to “peach leather,” a peach jerky made by drying peach strips in the sun. That technique isn't practical in New York City, but after I read an article about grilled desserts in
Men's Health
magazine, I figured grilling peaches was the next best thing.

Note:
This recipe works best late in summer when peaches are at their sweetest. Soft, ripe peaches work best because their juices release more quickly and caramelize better. I leave the pit in, but you don't have to. In winter, when good peaches are scarce and the grill sits under a heap of snow, you can broil canned peaches in your oven.

A good summer peach should be sweet enough to serve by itself, but some people like their grilled peaches drizzled with maple syrup.

For a more substantial dessert, serve with Greek yogurt or vanilla ice cream.

1 To make grilled peaches:
Wash and dry the peaches, and cut them in half.

2
Coat the grill with vegetable cooking spray and preheat for 10–15 minutes at medium-high heat. If you're grilling the peaches after grilling your main course, scrape the grill of any clinging meat or fish. You shouldn't need to re-spray.

3
Grill the peach halves for about 5 minutes, face down. You want the peaches to become soft and the juice to bubble. Blackened edges and grill marks are a good sign of when to turn them.

4
Turn the peaches over and grill for about 3 minutes, or until the peach skin has blackened in places.

5
If desired, drizzle with maple syrup, serve with Greek yogurt or vanilla ice cream, and garnish with dried cranberries, raisins, or walnuts.

1 To make broiled peaches:
Set your broiler to high. Rinse canned sliced peaches, or thawed frozen peaches in a colander under cold water, and drain. If using canned peaches, you want to remove as much of the sugar water as possible.

2
Grease the bottom of a broiling pan with olive oil. Pour the peaches into the pan and lightly salt. Broil the peaches for 5–6 minutes, or until the edges and points are blackened. Turn the peaches and broil for 2–3 minutes, or until blackened to your liking.

3
If desired, drizzle with maple syrup, serve with Greek yogurt or vanilla ice cream, and garnish with dried cranberries, raisins, or walnuts.

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Several years ago I was in Copenhagen researching my first novel,
The Danish Girl
. That makes it sound like a more organized and systematic trip than it actually was. I had heard about the remarkable Lili Elbe — a woman all but forgotten to history — and I went to Denmark on a hunch that there was a story to be found. Every day I went around the city, looking for signs of her life — at the Royal Academy of Arts, in the rolls of microfiche at the library — and then, in the afternoon, I'd go back to my little hotel room near the train station and write down what I had seen and learned. On the way, I'd stop at a bakery for a cup of coffee and a few Danish cookies to revive my mind for an evening of work. I've always liked cookies that aren't especially sweet. Something about the flour or, in this case, the oats, I find more satisfying than chips of chocolate or ginger or M&Ms. In any case, I'd buy a few cookies and think about the character I was trying to recover from history's blank memory. Standing at the bar in the bakery window, I'd nibble on the little cookies and sip my coffee and watch the pedestrians pass by on the street. A man walking a little white dog; a woman with a woven basket over her arm; a girl in a summer dress standing on the pedals of her red bicycle. It was in these moments that I began to find the heart of my novel, that I began to discover the heart of this Danish girl. The book would be about many things, but during those afternoons, alert with coffee and cookies, I came to realize that above all it would be about love.