In the midst of all that bookish goodness came more bookish news…The Heroine’s Bookshelf has a new cover!  Due to the many machinations of the publishing industry, a new cover was in order, and I think it’s really lovely.  The book will be in hardcover and I can’t wait to see the final iteration.  Many thanks to Christine Van Bree and the folks over at Harper for their patience, savvy, and attention to detail.  Here’s the new cover (click for huge version):

Scarlett O’Hara, Gone With the Wind:  Scarlett is not beautiful, nor is she a good mother at all.  We can barely chasten Rhett Butler for telling her a cat is a better mother than she, for Mrs. Hamilton/Kennedy/Butler extravagantly neglects the sheepish son and the ugly daughter who precede lovely little Bonnie Blue.  (Side note:  Margaret Mitchell’s portrayal of Wade Hampton Hamilton’s reaction to the events of the siege of Atlanta are brilliant and well worth rereading for anyone looking to learn a great lesson about conveying terror, the sweep of historical events, and the plot intricacies of main characters)  Though Scarlett gets punished for her neglectful motherhood in the end, we can’t help but wonder how her own angelic mom’s lessons never managed to wear off on her…and somehow manage to identify with her all the same.

Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest: Okay, so Joan isn’t exactly a fictional character, though God only knows how fictitious her daughter’s famous tell-all memoir really is.  One fact, however, is abundantly clear:  JOAN CRAWFORD WAS AN EVIL MOTHER.  Attempted stranglings?  Throwing her daughter’s adopted status in her face?  Wire-hangered beatings?  Yeah.  Chalk it up to old Joan, who really knew how to bring the drama to her trainwreck family.

Mrs. Bennet, Pride and Prejudice: Our next selection is not so much a terrible mother as a very…misguided one.  Burdened with the cross of five daughters to marry off, Mrs. Bennet has many pressing worries.  But worse than her bumbling around all matrimonial affairs is a complete disregard of her daughters’ feelings that we have to admit seems excessive, even for the turn of the nineteenth century.  Mrs. Bennet is also…clueless.  “My poor nerves, you tear them to pieces! But I never complain.”

Ingrid Magnussen, White Oleander: Cruelty, neglect, abandonment, and even murder are all on good old Ingrid’s plate at some point, but once again the emotional aspects of the relationship between this anti-heroine and her daughter are of the most interest to me.  It isn’t that Ingrid is evil (she is)…it’s that she is utterly unable to identify with the daughter she gave birth to, and Janet Fitch explores the fallout of a mother’s failure in a pulpy, poignant read.

The yummy results follow.  Each is directly attributed to one of my favorite authors or one of her family members.  Also, how awful is it that I’ve given up sweets for Lent?  I know what I’ll be preparing Easter Sunday.

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Mock Cherry Pie

Food fakery is a vital heroine skill.  Don’t have cherries?  Cranberries and raisins will do just as well!  This recipe is attributed to Maud, whose Marilla admonishes:  “You’ve got to keep your wits about you in cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove all over creation.” (Prefer raspberry cordial or some other dishes mentioned in the Anne books?  This link’s for you.)

Pastry for a double-crust 9-inch pie
2 cups cranberries, chopped
1 cup raisins, chopped
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup cold water
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Line a 9-inch pie plate with half the pastry. Make a lattice crust with remaining dough.  In a saucepan, combine cranberries, raisins, sugar, flour and water; bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool slightly. Stir in vanilla.  Turn filling into pastry-lined pie plate. Moisten edge with water and top with lattice crust.  Bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake another 20 to 30 minutes, or until crust is nicely browned and filling is bubbly. Serves six.

Louisa May Alcott’s Blancmange

Did you ever read Little Women and wonder, like me, what the heck blancmange is?  I am led to believe that it is a kind of sweet, white flan, as sweet and white as the plump hands of Meg March, whom I can imagine creating this blancmange and complaining over her unfashionable gowns.  You will recall that Jo brings a blancmange to Laurie when he is sick as a sort of wedge into his house and heart.  She succeeds.  This recipe is attributed to Abba Alcott, Louisa’s mother.

2 tbsp arrowroot
1 quart milk
1/2 cup sugar, more to taste
1 pinch salt
Something savory – orange water, rose water, or lemon peel

Take two tablespoonfuls of arrowroot to one quart of milk and a pinch of salt. Scald the milk, sweeten it with sugar to taste and then stir in the arrowroot, which must first be wet with some milk. Let it boil once. Orange water, rose water, or lemon peel can be used to flavor it. Pour it into molds to cool.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Gingerbread

Whenever I gain a pound, I blame Laura, whose description of crackling pig tails, bountiful pies, and tables laden with the goodness of hardy, sensible pioneer cooking are enough to drive any girl face-first into a pile of biscuits.  Though it’s easy to find recipes inspired by the Little House books, it’s harder to find ones directly attributed to Laura that aren’t protected by copyright.  Here’s one to start with:

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup lard (fine, shortening will do)
1 cup molasses
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup boiling water
3 cups flour
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs

Blend brown sugar with lard.  Mix in molasses until well-coated.  Dissolve baking soda in boiling water (be sure cup is full of water after foam runs off into cake mixture).  Mix well.  In a separate bowl, mix flour with spices and salt.  Sift into wet mixture and mix well; mixture will be “quite thin.”  Finally, add two well-beaten eggs and bake in a moderate (350 degrees) for thirty minutes.

In celebration of Laura, here are some fun facts about the mother of the Little House on the Prairie books:

• In her later years, Laura was notoriously frugal, probably because of the many years of disaster she endured both as a girl pioneer and as wife in a family plagued by economic and physical hardship.  When financial times got hard (the family lost much of their money in the stock market crash of 1929), a standard money-saving suggestion was to turn off the electricity.
• Laura was a fierce competitor and once declared that she would live to 90 because her husband, Almanzo, had.
• Laura wasn’t “just” a writer…she was a poultry and farming expert who was widely sought after for her advice and input on rural life.
• Rose Wilder Lane wasn’t Laura’s only child.  She had a son, never named, who died soon after his birth in 1889.
• When Laura’s books took off, she didn’t keep her earnings all to herself.  Instead, she sent several young people through college and provided for her parents in their old age.
• Laura was truly a “half-pint of cider half drunk up”…she stood four feet eleven inches tall.
• The Little House on the Prairie books were originally written as a long-form memoir for an adult audience, but Laura’s daughter Rose convinced her to try it for the children’s market after it failed to sell.  Laura’s sister Carrie apparently provided both moral support and supplemented Laura’s writing with her own memories.

• The new Louisa May Alcott movie that recently ran on American Masters on PBS.  I really enjoyed this film, even though I abhor historical reenactments in documentaries.  The best part was watching LMA’s biographers and great champions Madeleine Stern and Dr. Leona Rostenberg talk about figuring out that Louisa wrote pulp novels under the name of A.M. Barnard.  Their glee over this momentous literary discovery, half a decade after the fact, was contagious.  (Also, who doesn’t love elderly female scholars?)
• Lizzie Skurnick’s recent article on heroines in peril.  Though I don’t agree with the article entirely, I think it’s important to look at what heroines are doing and how it affects readers and viewers. (Thanks to Lorelei Laird for pointing me to this link.)
• Little House:  The Musical! also known as The Best Christmas Present Ever.  Though several anachronisms made me cringe (the Ingalls girls betting on a horse race?  I think not!), it was a great way to spend an evening.

There were so many ways of seeing things and so many ways of saying them.

- Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Shores of Silver Lake

Left to right:  Caroline Celestia “Carrie” Ingalls, Mary Ingalls, Laura Ingalls, late 1870s

Here are some tidbits I’ve come across in the past several weeks:

• Jane Eyre, illustrated:  A great collection of artistic interpretations of everyone’s favorite plane Jane, Jane Eyre
• Pioneer Girl:  A blog devoted to Laura Ingalls Wilder fact and fiction
• A fascinating look at the history of Times New Roman (and its connection to children’s book illustrator [famous for The Secret Garden and A Little Princess] Tasha Tudor)

Also, if you’re interested in issues of girls and boys reading (I sure know I am), check out my contribution to Newbery Honor winner and all around superstar Kirby Larson’s blog (coming next week sometime).  Preview here…