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| Photo by Julia Shapiro |
Today, novelist and cookbook author Judith Fertig is here to talk about the power of story. Her debut novel, The Cake Therapist, was published last week and Berkley has THREE copies to share with some lucky US readers! Just looking at the cover makes our mouth water for the story inside.
Judith Fertig grew up in the Midwest, went to cooking school in London and Paris, and now lives in the Kansas City area. Described by Saveur Magazine as a "heartland cookbook icon," Fertig debuts a new novel that engage the mind, the heart, and all five senses—and celebrates cookbooks that reflect her love of bread, baking, barbecue, and the fabulous foods of the Heartland.
Her food and lifestyle writing has appeared in Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Vegetarian Times, Natural Awakenings, Better Homes & Gardens, Saveur, Country Living, Cooking Pleasures, Family Fun, Coastal Living, Southern Living, La Vie Claire, Spaces Magazine, and Cooking Light. Her work has appeared internationally in Country Homes and Interiors (London), The New York Times, and The London Sunday Times.
Judith has appeared on the Food Network and many TV and radio stations. She gives talks across the country, blogs, tweets, and posts on Facebook. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, The Kansas City Barbeque Society, The Kansas City Novel Group, and IACP. (Bio adapted from Judith's website.)
You can learn more about her at her website, blog, Facebook, and Twitter.
Synopsis of The Cake Therapist:
Claire “Neely” O’Neil is a pastry chef of extraordinary talent. Every great chef can taste shimmering, elusive flavors that most of us miss, but Neely can “taste” feelings—cinnamon makes you remember; plum is pleased with itself; orange is a wake-up call. When flavor and feeling give Neely a glimpse of someone’s inner self, she can customize her creations to help that person celebrate love, overcome fear, even mourn a devastating loss.
Maybe that’s why she feels the need to go home to Millcreek Valley at a time when her life seems about to fall apart. The bakery she opens in her hometown is perfect, intimate, just what she’s always dreamed of—and yet, as she meets her new customers, Neely has a sense of secrets, some dark, some perhaps with tempting possibilities. A recurring flavor of alarming intensity signals to her perfect palate a long-ago story that must be told.
Neely has always been able to help everyone else.
Getting to the end of this story may be just what she needs to help herself. (Courtesy of Judith's website.)
The Power of Story
As a food writer, I’ve know that flavor tells a story. The golden sweetness of fresh-picked corn evokes a hot and humid Midwestern summer. Sour, pickled tastes imply a frugal mindset and a cold climate, a need for a sharp flavor to perk up winter-blah meals.
When I began to write my debut novel, The Cake Therapist, I still wanted flavor to tell a story. This time, I endowed my pastry chef heroine with a special ability. Claire “Neely” Davis would be able to “read” people as flavors. Flavor as a hyperlink to a feeling. And a feeling as the heart of a story.
And we all have one. Or several.
Our stories can powerfully guide us through life, or just as powerfully hold us back.
Neely gives her customers the flavors they need to get in touch with their stories and move through life. And she finally glimpses the hidden story behind a rogue flavor that has tormented her, bringing closure and a measure of healing to a family.
That’s how story can work in fiction.
And here’s how it can work in real life.
The Power of Story on the Emotions
Revealing our stories can help us feel worthy and connected. “Each of us is a constantly unfolding narrative, a hero in a novel no one else can write,” says Lissa Rankin, M.D., a practitioner of integrative medicine in Ojai, California. “And yet so many of us leave our stories untold, our songs unsung—and when this happens, we wind up feeling lonely, listless, out of touch with our life’s purpose, plagued with a chronic sense that something is out of alignment. We may even wind up feeling unworthy, unloved, or sick,” says Rankin,
"Telling your story—while being witnessed with loving attention by others who care—may be the most powerful medicine on earth,” Rankin says.
The Power of Story on the Physical Body
James Pennebaker, currently Professor and Chair of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of the pioneers in the mind/body benefits of story, which he explores in Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions. In the late 1980s, Pennebaker was consulting with the Texas prison system and discovered an interesting phenomenon. Suspects were given polygraph tests that measured their own physical responses, such as heart rate, to the answers they gave. When they were lying, their physical symptoms showed increased heart rate. But when they finally confessed, their bodies relaxed.
“Our cells know the truth,” writes microbiologist Sondra Barrett, PhD., in Secrets of Your Cells. “Our physiology responds to what we’re thinking, including what we don’t want people to know.” When we are afraid to tell a story and keep it in, “our cells broadcast a signal of danger,” she says. “Molecules of adrenalin (along with stress hormones) connect with receptors on heart, muscle, and lung cells—and in the case of long-term sustained stress, immune cells.” We then experience increased heart rate, tense muscles, shortness of breath, and lower immunity. “When we release the stories and feelings that torment us, our cells respond with great relief,” she adds, and “become havens of safety once again.”
What if we tell ourselves the wrong story, as a character in The Cake Therapist does, with almost disastrous consequences?
The Power of the Wrong Story
I will always be overweight. My partner doesn’t love me. I’m stuck here.
Our thoughts are simply a shorthand version of a longer life story, says Byron Katie, author of Who Would You Be Without Your Story? Katie has traveled the world with the program she calls The Work. It's a simple four-question process we can use to examine the story we've been telling ourselves. By questioning our stories, turning them around, and crafting new and more truthful ones, we can change our lives. “The cause of suffering is the thought that we’re believing,” she says.
It’s the power of story.
Thanks to Judith for a thought-provoking post and Berkley for sharing her book with our readers.
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