The Book of Difficult Fruit by Kate Lebo, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

In a work of unique invention, pie expert and poet Kate Lebo blends the medical, culinary, and personal to make lyrical essays and recipes inspired by twenty-six fruitsA is for Aronia, berry member of the apple family, clothes-stainer, superfruit with healing power. D is for Durian, endowed with a dramatic rind and a shifty odor- turpentine to motor oil to stomach acid. M is for Medlar, name-checked by Shakespeare for its crude shape, beloved by landscapers for its funny flowers. Q is for Quince, which, fresh, gives off the scent of "roses and citrus and rich women's perfume" but cannot be eaten until bletted: softened by frost and left to rot a bit. These and other difficult fruits serve as the central ingredients of twenty-six lyrical essays that range from deeply personal to medical history, sometimes within a single piece. The entries are associative, often poetic, taking unexpected turns and giving sideways insights into life, relationships, self-care, modern medicine, and more. What if the primary way you show love is to bake, but your boyfriend suffers from celiac disease? Why leave in the pits for Willa Cather's Plum Jam? How can we rely on bodies as fragile as the fruits that nourish them?Lebo's unquenchable curiosity leads us to intimate, poetic contemplations of pleasure and suffering, medicine and poison, transgression, power and erasure. Weaving together memoir, history, and personal essay, The Book of Difficult Fruit is the very best of food writing: graceful, surprising, and ecstatic. Includes black and white illustrations | The Book of Difficult Fruit by Kate Lebo, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters