Like Wafers in Honey: A Novel (Leah Eskin)

“This beautiful novel, a survival story and a cultural archive, honors a nearly vanished world through narrative and recipes, showing how memory, food, and storytelling can resist erasure.” ―Yotam Ottolenghi, author of Jerusalem: A Cookbook and Ottolenghi Comfort

This debut novel from food writer Leah Eskin of the Chicago Tribune combines the historical sweep and emotional power of The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer and the resonant use of food and recipes of Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.

The story opens on the mountaintop town of Pitigliano, Italy, once called Little Jerusalem for its vibrant, centuries-old Jewish community. But the year is 1943. Mussolini has enacted anti-Jewish laws across Italy, and the family of Stella Fortuna struggles to maintain any sense of their former life. Then one night a neighbor comes to their door holding a ricotta pudding and tells them “You must leave now. You’re in grave danger.” The Nazis have arrived to help the Fascists of Italy enact their own Final Solution.