Bibliofiles
Cooking Up Murder
avoid becoming a corpse herself.
often sidle up to me
island, each thinking
Here, Agatha Award-winning
and whisper that
that she was there for
author Katherine Hall Page ’69
they have a fool-
some other reason.
(below, left) talks about her 20th
proof way to murder
It’s been an amazingly
novel in the Faith Fairchild series
someone without
popular book and one
and about what gets her creative
being detected. At
that’s very dear to me.
In The Body in the Boudoir, New
juices flowing, both on the page
one of these things,
I am an unabashedly
York City caterer and sometime-
and in the kitchen.
a blue-haired grand-
adoring alum.
KATHERINE HALL PAGE ’69
The Body in the Boudoir HarperCollins, New York 255 pages, $23.99
sleuth Faith Fairchild finds herself
mother told me how
falling in love with the one man
Your heroine, Faith Fairchild, is a
you could kill someone by using using i
What’s next for you—and for
she swore she’d never marry, a
caterer, and your novels are pep-
a quilting needle that has been
Faith?
clergyman. But before she can
pered with recipes of your own
dipped in water from the roots of
I’m just turning in the proofs for
walk down the aisle, this blushing
invention. Did you ever consider
lily of the valley, which is poison-
my 21st book, which will come
bride has to solve a murder—and
a career in the culinary arts?
ous. I loved that, so I used that in
out next spring. It’s called The
No. In fact, I came from a nonfood
my second book.
Body in the Piazza. It takes place
background. My mother was
when she finally matriculates—that, “Before I had arrived on campus, I would see the name Wellesley and know, for a brief instant, that it was a place inextricably connected to my sense of who I could become.” As a child, Naomi is reserved, unable to fit in at school and unsure of how to wield her impressive memory. Her mother is chronically depressed and emotionally unavailable, like a person “who had no script, whose life story was permanently sealed.” Naomi withdraws even more when her only friend moves away. She buries her sadness under but when she starts cold ambition, bi i lege, she expects her melancholy will disappear. Of course, it doesn’t—at least not at first. Percer is at her best once Naomi arrives at Wellesley, and the reader witnesses the character’s gradual transformation, both socially and intellectually. Naomi goes to college with the intention of becoming a surgeon, and her firstyear grades are superb. Her spirits, however, are low. (“Not only had my loneliness followed me
in Italy and literally picks up
Norwegian-American, and we had
Does Wellesley make any
where The Body in the Boudoir
the food she’d grown up with: a lot
cameo appearances in your
left off.
of fish, boiled potatoes, vegetables
novels?
that had been cooked to death.
Yes! When I wrote The Body in
roads. What I’d like to do in the
When I got to Wellesley, I was in
the Ivy, I fictionalize Wellesley as
immediate future is write some
culinary heaven.
Pelham College. It’s an homage
stand-alone suspense, but there
to Agatha Christie’s And Then
will always be Faith.
After that I’m at a cross-
What’s your favorite way to get
There Were None, and so I have
away with murder?
all these alums who haven’t seen
Ligon is a writer and editor living
At parties or events, people will
one other since graduation on this
in Edmonton, Canada.
to Wellesley, it was threatening to grow there.”) After accidentally witnessing an intimate and dangerous event on Lake Waban during her sophomore year—and saving a student’s life—Naomi is accepted into the fold of the Shakespeare Society. She finds this group to be wild and fun. The outside “tightly-wound” college community disappears behind the doors of the Shakespeare House. There are many moments in this novel that will trigger a pang of recognition in alumnae. In the instant when Naomi feels the “first tug of friendship” with another student, it is “as if something sleeping and hungry inside of [her] had been gently kicked awake.” There are also moments that may cause a good-natured eye roll, like Naomi’s observation that Wellesley women do not greet one another on the walkway, or have “the ability to have an easygoing engagement with the world.” Percer’s writing is lovely, although at times I wondered where the story was going. However, payoff comes at the satisfying ending, after Naomi realizes that she cannot save everyone she loves. She is content and at peace with her path. I hope we can all be so lucky. Eliza Borné ’09 Borné is a writer and editor in Nashville, Tenn.
Sarah Ligon ’03
FreshInk Caroline Alethia ’87 (a pseudonym; the author requests to not have her name published)—Plant Teacher, Viator, Charleston, S.C. Lisa Alther (Elisabeth Reed Alther ’66)—Blood Feud: The Hatfields & The McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder & Vengence, Lyons Press, Guildford, Conn. Leslie Andrews ’82 with Adrienne Wax—Even Par: How Golf Helps Women Gain the Upper Hand in Business, 85 Broads, Greenwich, Conn. Catherine Blakemore (Catherine Corry Blakemore ’55)—Mixed Heritage: Your Source for Books for Children and Teens About Persons and Families of Mixed Racial, Ethnic, and/or Religious Heritage, Adams-Pomeroy Press, Albany, Wis. Susan Cory ’75—Conundrum: An Architectural Mystery, Cory Publishing, Cambridge, Mass. Paula Fredriksen ’73—Sin: The Early History of an Idea, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. (Continued on page 89)
summer 2012
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