Karma Brown's new novel is Recipe for a Perfect Wife.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for Recipe for a Perfect Wife, and for your characters Alice and Nellie?--Marshal Zeringue
A: I own quite a few vintage cookbooks—the more food splattered and well-loved the better—and had this idea of how an old house, a dark secret (or two), and a shared cookbook would link together the lives of two women—one modern and one from the past.
Having a young daughter, gender roles are often on my mind, and I also wanted to explore the expectations we continue to place on women, wives and mothers even in these more progressive times.
Nellie was the first character to come to mind, and she arrived in my brain fully formed and ready to tell her story. Alice was murkier in the beginning—particularly because gender roles are not as clear cut as they once were—but she was the character who...[read on]