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EAT CAKE (Shaye Areheart Books)
by Jeanne Ray
Mmm . . . Nothing brings a family together like a warm, delicious slice of cake! Or so believes Ruth hopson, who bakes so much that her husband, mother, and teenage daughter beg her to stop. But little does Ruth know how important her baking will become to her family when life takes a turn for the worse—and Ruth discovers a strength she didn’t even know she had. This heartwarming tale by the best-selling author of Julie and Romeo will leave readers wanting second helpings. “[Ray’s] characters . . . capture the reader’s heart and sympathy from the beginning.”—Denver Post
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Excerpt from Select Editions’ Eat Cake
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Years ago I went to a seminar on stress reduction at the Y. Most of what the instructor told us struck me as either obvious (make lists of what you have to do and check off what you’ve accomplished) or embarrassing (a series of breathing exercises that made me think of Lamaze class), but there was one thing he said that made the whole class worthwhile: He told us we should visualize a place where we felt completely safe and peaceful. He said it didn’t make any difference if it was someplace we knew well or someplace we’d only dreamed about, but that we should think about it in great detail, memorize all the sights and the sounds. Then he instructed us to go to this place in our minds. I glanced quickly around the room. My classmates had closed their eyes and gone to their childhood bedroom or a beach in Jamaica or wherever life was simpler. I had no idea where I was supposed to go. I felt embarrassed sitting in my folding chair, as if the people around me would know that I was still in the conference hall while they were all walking down a white sand beach. I ran over a quick mental list: the house on Lake Placid we rented one summer; my own back porch; Paris, where I’ve never been but would like to someday go. None of them seemed right. But when I finally closed my eyes, what I wanted came to me with complete clarity. The place that I went, the place that I still go, was the warm, hollowed-out center of a Bundt cake. It is usually gingerbread, though sometimes it’s gingerbread crowned in a ring of poached pears. The walls that surround me are high and soft, but as they go up, they curve back, open to the light, so I feel protected by the cake but never trapped by it. There are a few loose crumbs around my feet, clinging to my hair, and the smell—the ginger and butter, the lingering subtlety of vanilla . . . I thought I might never open my eyes.
Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve cake. No, really, I couldn’t, she says. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake, and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life.
This is a story of how my life was saved by cake. So of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake.
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