A memoir of growing up poor and hungry in 1970s western New York: “Like an American version of Angela’s Ashes.”—Kathleen Norris, New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk When you eat soup every night, thoughts of bread get you through. One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western New York that remain relatively hidden from the rest of America. From an old farming town to an Indian reservation to a dead-end urban neighborhood, Livingston and her siblings follow their nonconformist mother from one ramshackle house to another on the perpetual search for something better. Along the way, the young Sonja observes the harsh realities her family encounters, as well as small moments of transcendent beauty that somehow keep them going. While struggling to make sense of her world, Livingston perceives the stresses and patterns that keep children—girls in particular—trapped in the cycle of poverty. Informed by cultural experiences such as Livington’s love for Wonder Woman and Nancy Drew and her experiences with the Girl Scouts and Roman Catholicism, this lyrical memoir firmly eschews sentimentality, offering instead a meditation on what it means to hunger and showing that poverty can strengthen the spirit just as surely as it can grind it down. “[A]n absolutely astonishing debut…harrowing and hilarious.”—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times-bestselling author of With or Without You “Livingston reveals the daily challenges poverty-stricken young children face.”—Booklist “Weaves together a child’s experience of not belonging, the perilous ease of slipping into failure, and the deep love that can flow from even a highly troubled parent.”—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist

Whether pulled from the folds of memory, channeled through the icons of Greek mythology and Roman Catholicism, or filtered through the lens of pop culture, Sonja Livingston’s Queen of the Fall considers the lives of women. Exploring the legacies of those she has crossed paths with in life and in the larger culture, Livingston weaves together strands of memory with richly imagined vignettes to explore becoming a woman in late 1980s and early 1990s America. Along the way, the award-winning memoirist brings us face-to-face with herself as an inner-city girl—trying to imagine a horizon beyond poverty, fearful of her fertility and the limiting arc of teenage pregnancy. Livingston looks at the lives of those she’s known: friends who’ve gotten themselves into “trouble” and disappeared never to be heard from again, girls who tell their school counselor small lies out of necessity and pain, and a mother whose fruitfulness seems, at times, biblical. Livingston interacts with figures such as Susan B. Anthony, the Virgin Mary, and Ally McBeal to mine the terrain of her own femininity, fertility, and longing. Queen of the Fall is a dazzling meditation on loss, possibility, and, ultimately, what it means to be human. Watch a book trailer

"A beautifully written book by a true artisan. . . . Easy to read and likely to inspire, this book will take your bread-making to the next level.”—Sandor Ellix Katz, fermentation revivalist; author of The Art of Fermentation and other fermentation bestsellers “It’s impossible to read through the recipes in The Hungry Ghost Bread Book without being inspired to scoop out some sourdough starter and get mixing.”—Maurizio Leo, author of James Beard Award–winning The Perfect Loaf For the adventurous home baker and small-scale commercial baker alike, The Hungry Ghost Bread Book is a delicious guide and a pious devotional to the wonderful, awe-inspiring world of sourdough. What does it mean to take on the practice of bread? Jonathan Stevens, co-owner of Hungry Ghost Bread in Northampton, Massachusetts, has pondered this question over thirty years of baking sourdough bread. Baking is a ritual that demands attention, physical proximity, close observation, and continual adjustment. It begets sustenance, fosters community, and connects us with a 10,000-year-old craft. The Hungry Ghost Bread Book is a window onto one baker’s artisan approach to sourdough bread—the culmination of his time in the tide of dough. Sourdough, declares Stevens, is not a style of bread. It is bread. The sourdough starter—the microbial community used to inoculate bread dough—transforms flour into something truly digestible by humans, unlocking the nutrients that are otherwise inaccessible. Stevens’s unique approach to working with sourdough can be summed up by three tenets, each of which begins with “more.” More hydration, more fermentation, and more heat in the oven. Inside these pages, you’ll find tools, techniques, insights, short-cuts, ingredients, warnings, and a handful of haikus. You’ll find instructions for creating and nurturing your own sourdough starter, as well as formulas for a variety of loaves, flatbreads, crackers, folds, scones, bagels, and more, including: Eight-Grain Bread Fig & Sage Bread Potato-Thyme Fougasse Sesame-Spelt Crackers Rosemary Walnut Scones The results are quite fantastic: bread that bites back, heels worth chewing on, and scraps worth toasting. A return to real Wonder. "The Hungry Ghost feeds more than spirits with its spectacular breads."—Saveur (naming Hungry Ghost Bread a "Great American Bread Bakery")

"Eating is in : everything from haute cuisine to diner chic. But the best place to find the heart and soul of American cooking is still in the hundreds of local, year-round food festivals that are as American as fresh-caught Maine lobster or fiery Louisiana jambalaya. 'Food Festival!' is the first complete introduction to the sights, sounds, doings, and good eats of these colorful celebrations. It combines : complete introductions to 58 of the country's most enjoyable festivals with a wide-ranging collection of over 130 recipes. This delicious tour of everything from legendary Lexington, North Carolina barbecue to fresh Ipswich, Massachusetts strawberry shortcake includes : a brief history of each festival ; vivid, you-are-there descriptions of the major events ; important travel tips (with general directions, dates, times, and ticket information ) ; a savory selection of fully tested recipes (including everything from Maple Baked Ham to Crawfish Etouffé). 'Food Festival!' is the ultimate companion to the wide-open world of American eating."--

Tales of life on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in New York State, from the late 1930s to the 1950s.