Jessica Fechtor blends the story of her near-fatal brain aneurysm with recipes as if it's a natural combination. And for someone with her optimism and modesty, it is.
"When I tell people that I am writing the story of a bloodied and broken brain--and oh, by the way, there will be recipes, too--I get some strange looks," she writes of her memoir, Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home.
In 2008, Jessica, an ambitious doctoral student in Jewish literature, a marathon runner and wife, toppled from a treadmill. Thus began two years of surgeries, first for the aneurysm and then for complications. She lost her sense of smell and depth perception, and spent months in a protective helmet, followed by plastic surgery to rebuild her skull.
Typical of Jessica's sunny attitude, she refers to this time simply as "her illness." Thoughts of food were a comfort. "Food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people." And her people rallied for her: Aunt Leslie's post-surgery chicken soup, raspberries her family harvested "braving mud, and thorns and each other." Early in her recovery she resumed baking her traditional Friday night challah bread.
Luckily for her Sweet Amandine blog followers, her husband, Eli, noted just before her final surgery that cooking made Jessica happiest. "My kitchen wasn't the route back to the person I had been. It was something better: the route to who I would become." Good food, a new career and a healthy family combine for the happiest of endings. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco