kitchen daughter

Jeal McHenry writes an Asperger's character like I've never known, seen, or read before in The Kitchen Daughter. Ginny Selvaggio rocks in the kitchen. Sure, she's really annoying in the rest of her messed up life, but aren't we all? It's terrible now that I can't recall how old Ginny is, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties? She's the eldest of two sisters, though Amanda, the younger who is married with three children and lives elsewhere bosses Ginny around.

Ginny needs a bit of bossing at times because she doesn't cope well when the sticky bits of life swoop in and tackle her. Or, maybe not. Ginny still lived at home in Philadelphia with her parents. She never graduated from college because she couldn't pass that darned speech class. Her darling mother blamed her problems on her strong personality and resisted the establishment's need to label Ginny.

Now that Ginny's parents died Amanda returned to Philly to make the funeral arrangements and having all the relatives in the house sent Ginny into a cooking frenzy. She pulled a cookbook from the kitchen's shelves, cut into onions, and soothed her frazzled nerves the only way she knew how by crafting a batch of her Nonna's best Ribollita soup. As she follows the directions she reads from Nonna's handwritten recipe cards and the aroma of the soup's scent drifts up through the kitchen she notices her Nonna sitting next to the refrigerator.

The trouble is that Nonna is dead. Has been for twenty years.

Is Ginny crazy? Or, has she stumbled onto a secret? Does she possess cooking skills so powerful that they call forth the dead from their graves?

Well, it's a lovely mystery which unfolds as one reads through to the last page, especially as Amanda and Ginny battle it out over selling the house. Ginny plans to remain and care for herself and Amanda thinks Ginny should move in with her family because she cannot care for herself. McHenry's novel is filled with complex characters dealing with weighty issues.

Especially lovely are Gert, the woman who comes to clean once a week, and her son David, who she asks to deliver groceries to Ginny after her parents die. Seeing Ginny open up to the world after her parents death extends a lovely message of hope for her future. And watching her blossom when Gert asks her help with cooking at her temple for the burial society, the chevra kadisha. First she works with hard boiled eggs, then checks lentils for bad beans or stones. GInny decides she prefers the Jewish mourning process because she's thinking about it constantly.

I love the Normal book Ginny pasted from newspaper stories and comforts herself by reading when she feels especially low.  Recipes accompany each of Ginny's cooking adventures  with the spirit world so that readers might sample them and the handwritten fonts lend an air of authenticity.

But, the book's true strength lies in two parts. First, with McHenry's depiction of Ginny's undiagnosed Apserger's. The author takes us for a ride inside Ginny's mind and shines a light into the closets where difference or "peculiarity" hides. Secondly, McHenry infuses Kitchen Daughter with a cornucopia of sensuality; of aroma, of texture, of vision, and of taste. All food lovers will revel in this novel and find an kindred soul in Ginny Selvaggio who finds her balm in cooking.