This is a story about accepting the people we love — the people we have to love and the people we choose to love, the families we’re given and the families we make. It’s the story of two women adrift in New York, a widow and an almost-orphan, each searching for someone she’s lost. It’s the story of how, even in moments of grief and darkness, there are joys waiting nearby. Lorca spends her life poring over cookbooks, making croissants and chocolat chaud, seeking out rare ingredients, all to earn the love of her distracted chef of a mother, who is now packing her off to boarding school. In one last effort to prove herself indispensable, Lorca resolves to track down the recipe for her mother’s ideal meal, an obscure Middle Eastern dish called masgouf. Victoria, grappling with her husband’s death, has been dreaming of the daughter they gave up forty years ago. An Iraqi Jewish immigrant who used to run a restaurant, she starts teaching cooking lessons; Lorca signs up. Together, they make cardamom pistachio cookies, baklava, kubba with squash. They also begin to suspect they are connected by more than their love of food. Soon, though, they must reckon with the past, the future, and the truth — whatever it might be. Bukra fil mish mish, the Arabic saying goes. Tomorrow, apricots may bloom.
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“Narrator Kathleen Gati’s soft, consistentMiddle Eastern accent is the perfect choice for the elderly Victoria, who is anIraqi immigrant. Lorca’s chapters are read by Kate Reinders, whose girlishinflections flawlessly telegraph the teen’s roller-coaster emotions. The pacingand expressiveness of the two performances are so well matched that listeners remaincaptivated as the protagonists are drawn together through food and cooking.”
— AudioFile
“A profound and necessary new voice. Soffer’s prose is as controlled as it is fresh, as incisive as it is musical. Soffer has arrived early, with an orchestra of talent at her disposal.”
— Colum McCann“Told in Victoria and Lorca’s alternating first-person voices, the character driven novel…offers fully realized, multidimensional characters who invite empathy and compassion.”
— Booklist“Well-written and atmospheric.”
— Kirkus ReviewsBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Jessica Soffer earned her MFA at Hunter College, where she was a Hertog Fellow. Her work has appeared in Granta, Vogue and the New York Times, among other publications. Her father, a painter and sculptor, emigrated from Iraq to the US in the late 1940s. She teaches fiction at Connecticut College and lives in New York City.
Kathleen Gati is an award-winning actress who has starred in a number of Hungarian television series and films.
Kate Reinders has won three AudioFile Earphones Awards for her audiobook narrations. She is an American musical-theater actress who has performed as lead and understudy in several Broadway shows and is best known for her performance as Glinda in the Broadway production Wicked.