NOVEL THOUGHTS
………
1960
(available in paperback from Little, Brown, 1988)
HARPER LEE’S Pulitzer Prize–winning book, To Kill a Mockingbird, is one of southern literature’s great works, set in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the 1930s. Atticus Finch, a local lawyer, is asked to represent Tom Robinson, a young black man falsely accused of raping a poor white girl. The story is told through the eyes of Atticus’s six-year-old daughter, Scout, as she and her older brother, Jem, and their friend Dill gradually come to recognize the prejudices and injustices of small-town Alabama.
First published in 1960, at the dawn of America’s civil rights movement, the book was an immediate success. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was adapted for the screen in 1962. The book’s popularity continues to this day. More than forty years after its publication, nearly half a million copies of To Kill a Mockingbird sold in 2002, and Book magazine ranked it fourth on its list of best-selling classics.
Soon after publication of her book, Harper Lee returned to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, refusing to grant any interviews. Today, at age eighty-five, she divides her time between Monroeville, where she lives a quiet life with her sister, and New York City.
A traditional southern holiday dessert, ambrosia is often enjoyed around Christmastime, when Florida citrus fruits are in season. At a Christmas dinner given by Atticus’s sister, Aunt Alexandra, Scout and Jem enjoy ambrosia. After being forced to converse with her boring cousin Francis and isolated at the kiddie table for dinner, Scout asserts that Aunt Alexandra’s meal “made up for everything.” We think the ambrosia had a lot to do with raising Scout’s spirits.
Using a serrated knife, remove the skin from the pineapple, and cut in half lengthwise again. Slice out the tough inner core and discard. Cut the pineapple meat into bite-size cubes and place in a large bowl.
Peel and section the oranges and grapefruit and cut into bite-size pieces, removing any seeds. Add to the pineapple and mix gently to avoid breaking the fruit sections.
In a separate bowl, mix together the orange juice, honey, and sherry (if using). Pour over the fruit and toss gently to coat each piece. Let salad stand for an hour or so before serving.
When ready to serve, place the fruit in a serving bowl and top with pecans and coconut. Store ambrosia in the refrigerator if you are not serving it soon.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings
NOVEL THOUGHTS
The Silicon Valley Book Club, which includes many couples living and working in Northern California’s high-tech belt, rediscovered To Kill a Mockingbird in 1994.
According to Jan Seerveld, the Silicon Valley Book Club’s shared experience and values helped the group appreciate the small-town life portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird. “We tend to like stories about small communities because we are part of one,” says Seerveld. They liked reading and discussing how large issues impact small communities, “how one side of the tracks affects the other side of the tracks.” To Seerveld, this mirrors “the close-knit nature of our group.”
Because the group shares a commitment to active Christian life, the Silicon Valley Book Club felt a special affinity for protagonist Atticus Finch. “We don’t necessarily look for faith-based heroes,” Seerveld says, “but we are always attracted to morally fine heroes.”
In San Francisco, Lisa Ryers’s book club reads Pulitzer Prize–winning novels, in chronological order, starting all the way back in 1918. Ryers formed the club as part of her personal pilgrimage to read the entire Pulitzer Prize list. The club likes to prepare meals that will take them to the time period and setting of the book. “The meal is a platform for creativity,” says Ryers. “Otherwise you end up going to your old standbys.”
When they read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, they created a meal that would take them to the Deep South in the 1930s. Their menu included cornbread, chicken and dumplings, collard greens, and pecan pie. “But everyone was really impressed by the Lane cake,” recalls Ryers.
A beautiful multilayered cake with white frosting and a filling of coconut, nuts, bourbon, and candied fruit, Lane cake is said to be named after Emma Rylander Lane of Clayton, Alabama, who first published her award-winning recipe in her cookbook, Some Good Things to Eat (1898), under the name “Prize cake.” The first time Miss Maudie Atkinson makes the cake in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout declares it “so full of shinny [whiskey] it made me tight.” On the second occasion, Miss Maudie plans to bake a Lane cake for a neighbor, but only when her other neighbor, Stephanie Crawford, is not looking. “That Stephanie’s been after my recipe for thirty years,” she complains, an example of the petty jealousies that make Macomb seem like any small American town.
Member Liz Amaral baked the Lane cake for the group’s dinner meeting. “I researched recipes and created my own version,” she says, which included four layers of cake with a pineapple-caramel-raisin-bourbon sauce between each layer and on top.