I am delighted to share a Q&A with the author ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
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Genre ~ A Coming Home Novel
Publication date ~ May 24, 2024
Get your copy on ~ Amazon
Add to your never ending TBR ~ goodreads
Q&A
Q: The idea for a novel including recipes – where did that come from?
A: I’ve asked myself that same question, and I can honestly say that I don’t know the answer. Right from the beginning, I knew that the southern food, the southern recipes, were going to be at the heart of the book. So many southern stories are bound up with the foods we love. They’re a through line, a connection from generation to generation. Once I started putting it on paper, getting acquainted with my characters, it felt right to put the recipes right into the book. But the book’s not *about* the recipes; it’s about the people and the relationships, and the narrator’s own homecoming journey. There’s plenty of humor, and maybe a tear or two along the way. I think The Heartpine Recipes might be a good book for summer reading – it’s a feel-good book, and I hope it’ll make people smile.
Q: Your narrator is an interesting character. Can you tell me a little more about her?
A: Grace is just past thirty, and we meet her at a point when she’s not sure where her life is going – what’s next. She’s just quit her job, and she’s just ended her engagement. She’s a writer, but her career so far has been on the periphery of real writing: advertising copywriter for a while, and then working at a company that offers support services for aspiring authors. She’s come home to stay with her Aunt Jess; that’s the woman who raised her, after both her parents passed. With nothing better to do, she gets drawn into helping her aunt with a new community cookbook – collecting the recipes, that kind of thing. At the start, it’s just a way to fill up the time, but she discovers that she’s also collecting the stories that go with the recipes…and in the process, she’s reconnecting to her home place, to the people, to her own past. She’s a strong young woman, very smart, and she thinks deeply about things – but she’s got a marvelous sense of humor, too. There’s nothing old-fashioned about her, but you could describe her as an old soul.
Q: Can you name some of your favorite books and authors – novels and people that have inspired you?
A: There are way too many to list, and I know I’ll feel awful, afterwards, for leaving something out. But off the top of my head, I’d want to mention The Country of the Pointed Firs, by Sarah Orne Jewett. It’s not a southern book; it’s set in a small town on the coast of Maine. It’s just a beautiful jewel of a book that stays with you, and every time I pick it up and think I’ll get away with reading just a few pages, I wind up reading the whole thing over again. It’s an episodic book, and I’m quite sure it breaks every “rule” of novel construction, but that doesn’t matter. Hawthorne, absolutely. More modern writers, well, I’m fond of Robert Penn Warren – oh, I guess he’s not really all that modern, is he? I enjoyed The Help quite a bit. It’s southern heresy, but I’m not a Faulkner fan. See, there I go, I know I’m leaving dozens of things out.
Q: How about Heartpine? Is that based on a real town?
A: It’s not real, meaning that you won’t find it on a map. You could say it was put together from parts and pieces of real places I know and love. And I think that’s sort of a red herring, the idea that any story can be set in a real place. Sherlock Holmes’s London has the same name as the actual city, but it’s really a city that the author imagined. “Heartpine” isn’t code for Jonesborough, or Greeneville, or any other real Tennessee town. You could think of it as the imaginary sister of those places, I suppose.
Q: Do you think you have to be from the south to connect with the book?
A: Oh, I hope not! I’d like to think that the people and their stories are universal. I think the most southern thing in it – aside from the food, naturally – is the love of language, the delight in the words themselves, the unfolding of the stories. I do believe that’s a part of the southern character. There’s a reason they put the International Storytelling Center in eastern Tennessee, you know.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about being a first-time novelist?
A: Well, I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember: short stories, poems, song lyrics, essays. And I spent years as an advertising copywriter, which is a different kind of creativity. As for novels, I stayed away from long-form fiction for a long time, and then one day – I’m not sure why – I decided to confront it again, and it seemed to come more naturally. Maybe it was pure inspiration, or maybe I had lived enough to have something to say. The Heartpine Recipes is my first published book, but it’s the fourth or fifth that I’ve written; the others were in different genres. It just felt right for this one to be the first.
Book blurb:
It’s more than southern storytelling. It’s southern storytelling with a side of biscuits.
When Grace Collier comes back to Heartpine, Tennessee, she’s thinking about endings. The end of her job. The end of her engagement. Instead, she finds a new beginning. A journey of discovery that will reconnect her to her home place…as well as her own past.
Like so many southern tales, this one starts out in the kitchen. Grace’s Aunt Jess – the wise, loving woman who raised her after her parents passed – is collecting recipes for a new community cookbook. It’s not long before Grace finds herself an honorary member of the cookbook committee; and next thing she knows, she’s busy gathering up all the rich stories that come with those recipes. All the surprises, all the mysteries, all the memories. Along the way, she gets to know a townful of unforgettable characters. Stirs up a few old secrets. And comes to terms, finally, with her own legacy of loss.
It’s about the recipes, yes. But more than that, it’s about the relationships. It’s a journey that links families and generations. A journey of homecoming and redemption.
And just for fun, every chapter includes an iconic southern recipe – so you can cook them up yourself and see what all the fuss is about. From cornbread to collards, from pulled pork to pineapple casserole, you’ll find them here. There’s even a never-fail recipe for the best sweet tea you’ve ever tasted (not that a true southern cook would need a recipe for that, heaven knows!).
Touching, positive and uplifting, The Heartpine Recipes is a generous serving of warmth, humor and heart.
Purchase Links
Author Bio:
You’ve probably read some of L.C. Fields’s writing, somewhere along the line. That’s because L.C. has spent a couple of decades at ad agencies, writing for a few of the great icon brands. Some of that experience is baked into L.C.’s fiction.
L.C. lives in rural Southwest Virginia – about an hour’s drive from the imagined town of Heartpine – off a winding gravel road. It’s a grand place to listen to the wind, watch the animals (including one ridiculously cute Kerry Blue Terrier) and soak up inspiration.
The Heartpine Recipes is L.C.’s first (published) novel.
Social Media Links:
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Website: https://lcfields.com
Amazon author page: https://amazon.com/author/lcfields_writer
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