PNW Bainbridge Summer 24

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

Author Parlays His Curiosity About Tomatoes into Literary Acclaim

BY CHRISTY CARLEY

When William Alexander planted his first garden, he didn’t start with a single bed.

“We got a little carried away,” he acknowledged about his family’s agricultural debut. They purchased a hundred-year-old house in the Hudson Valley and began to transform the surrounding lot.

“We had terraces, we had to bring in a landscaper, we brought in a designer,” Alexander recalled. In total, they installed 22 beds and planted all of them. But novice gardening turned out to be tricky. At first, Alexander turned to gardening books for solutions, but found it difficult to relate his own obstacles to what he was reading—so he decided to write his own book, aimed at beginner gardeners.

“I had written nothing in my life,” said Alexander, who was in his 50s at the time, with a full-time job in IT. He got up at 5 in the morning to write before going to work. When not writing or working, he said, “I was spending all of my time in the garden.”

PHOTOS COURTESY WILLIAM ALEXANDER

The resulting book, “The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden,” was a resounding success. Part comedic memoir, part how-to, it launched Alexander into the writing world.

“From there,” he said, “I just wanted to write about things that I wanted to do anyway.”

Alexander’s tendency to dive head-first into his hobbies resulted in two more books. His “52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust” chronicles a year-long, weekly baking project that involved a trip to a French monastery. Logically, his next memoir was about attempting to learn French in his 60s.

In his most recent book, which came out in 2022, Alexander’s curiosity led him to investigate the history of the tomato—and what he found was surprising. A 2023 Washington State Book Award finalist in nonfiction, “Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World: A History” charts the rise of the world’s favorite vegetable (or fruit, if you prefer) from its “pea-sized” origin in South America to its status as a staple in cuisines across the globe.

“I realized that even though I had written a book many years ago with the word tomato in the title, I really knew nothing about [its history],” Alexander said.

“I had thought the tomato was native to Italy.”

In fact, the tomato didn’t arrive in Italy until the 1540s. And for around 300 years after that it was considered decorative, rather than tasty. As late as the 19th century, an agricultural publication in the United States referred to the tomato as an “odious and repelling smelling berry.”

So how did the tomato go from being shunned outside of Latin America to the world’s most popular vegetable?

The answer is complicated, but it involves the history of prosciutto production in Italy, the American Civil War and the 19th century Popular Health Movement. Alexander also devoted a chapter to the history of ketchup, and another to pizza (with which, he contends, tomatoes have a “symbiotic” relationship in regard to status).

“Ten Tomatoes” is full of quirky historical anecdotes as well as some myth busting of popular tomato folklore. A travel narrative infused with charming (and, often, self-deprecating) humor ties the work together.

The book also takes on the tomato’s present and looks to its future. Specifically, Alexander wonders, why do supermarket tomatoes taste so bland compared with their homegrown counterparts? And how will a turn toward massive, high-tech hydroponic greenhouses impact tomato production, flavor and environmental footprint? While he doesn’t offer a definitive answer to this last question, Alexander does contend that we ought to be talking more about the future of tomato farming.

He and his wife traded their Hudson Valley home for an island condo (the couple recently moved to Bainbridge to be closer to their son and grandkids) but they still plan to grow tomatoes from seedlings this summer, albeit on a less ambitious scale.

As for Alexander’s next hobby-turned-title, he said he has a few ideas, but didn’t offer any hints.

“I’m mulling over some notions for the next book. It’s in the early mulling stage. You have to let things percolate for a while.”