This debut novel from food writer Leah Eskin of the Chicago Tribune combines the historical sweep and emotional power ofThe Invisible Bridgeby JulieOrringerand the resonant use of food and recipes ofLike Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.

The story opens on the mountaintop town ofPitigliano, Italy, once called Little Jerusalem for its vibrant, centuries-old Jewish community. But the year is 1943. Mussolini has enacted anti-Jewish laws across Italy, and the family of Stella Fortuna struggles tomaintainany sense of their former life. Then,one night,a neighbor comes to their door holding a ricotta pudding and tells them,You must leave now.Yourein grave danger.The Nazis have arrived to help the Fascists of Italy enact their own Final Solution.

Grabbing what few things they can carry (and the pudding), Stella Fortuna escapes into the woods belowPitiglianowith her two older brothers and younger sister, Marcella. What follows is a desperatemonths-long flight. Stella finds temporary and precarious shelter with sympathetic, but fearful families in the countryside, dodging the ever-closer Fascists in pursuit. Meanwhile, she dreams of romance, the comforts of home, and the food that was not just her mothers love, but the delicious expression of an entire culture in danger.

In a separate timeline, Edda Servi Machlin isa housewifein 1960s Westchester trying to make sense of a new culture, as well as the spaghetti and meatballs food that passes for Italian cuisine. With caustic wit, we see twentieth-century America through an immigrants eyes, someone who can never return to her former home because it no longer exists. Someone who comes to understand that it might be up to her to preserve the indelible flavors of an Italian-Jewish way of life that is in danger of extinction, as her family once was.

In between these two remarkable stories are more than forty recipes (updated for todays cooks), all inspired by the life and example of Edda Servi Machlin, author ofThe Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews.

P R A I S E

My father, himself an Italian Jew, used Edda Servi Machlins recipes as a bridge to his culinary and personal roots. Machlins life inspired this beautiful novel by Leah Eskin: a survival story and a cultural archive. It honors anearly vanishedworld through narrative and recipes, showing how memory, food, and storytelling can resist erasure. Yotam Ottolenghi, author ofJerusalem: A CookbookandOttolenghi Comfort

A tale of survival, faith, andfamily. Leah Eskin writes beautifully, powerfully, and with an exquisite tenderness. Achy Obejas, author ofDays of AweandThe Tower of the Antilles

Edda Servi Machlin was an icon of Jewish food writing and almost mythical in stature. Eskin’s novel illuminates the very human stories of love, longing, family, and food that made Servi Machlin so remarkable. It is a delicious delight to read. Leah Koenig, author ofPortico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen

Is it a disconnect to call a novel about an Italian-Jewish girl and her family surviving Mussolinis atrocities and the Holocaust charming? Author Leah Eskin has portrayed Edda Servi Machlins story with humor, elegance, delicious recipes, and always a deep humanity. I ate it up.Betsy Andrews, co-author ofCoastal: 130 Recipes from a California Road Trip

Leah Eskin has woven her passion for food and history into a delicious and moving tale of Jewish survival. Her book will inspire readers from all backgrounds to cook and to persevere.Gabriella Gershenson, James Beard Award-winning food writer