This is an old library book but in good condition. Animated as a family reunion, intimate as a lovers' picnic, American Cookery serves up tradition and innovation in a family novel based on the joy of cooking. The story is complete with twenty-seven recipes from the life and tumultuous times of Eden Douglass. Eden was born in 1920 into a contentious California tribe, and the ingredients of her life include her grandmother's reserve, her aunt's instinct for action, and her mother's foggy warmth. Seasoned with spicy herbs, and a few bitter ones, simmered and stirred over time, these instincts shape her destiny. Two strong-willed women--her grandmother Ruth Douglass and her aunt Afton Lance--struggle to pull Eden from the comfy sloth of her parents' home. Her ill-matched parents drift toward financial collapse, and her father, pursuing phantom wealth, takes the family to an Idaho mining town.