In her newest novel, The Care and Management of Lies, NY:  Harper, 2014, Jacqueline Winspear creates a new character for her fans, Kezia Brissenden, who gradually learns how to cook!

She runs a large farm, learns to develop recipes, writes them down in mouth-watering detail in letters to her husband Tom, a soldier on the frontlines of World War One.  He reads the letters aloud to his mates in the trenches, as she describes the addition of herbs in a sauce, the aroma of a succulent lamb stew, the crust for an apple pie etc.  Kezia is an ordinary woman on the homefront, but the author typically brings the young woman's personal troubles, and her farm kitchen to life.  Ms. Winspear is the author of the fabulously popular Maisie Dobbs mysteries.

At each chapter heading there is a brief quote from Florence B. Jack’s The Woman’s Book: Contains Everything a Woman Ought to Know, published in 1911.  It is a wedding present from Kezia’s best friend Thea (Tom’s sister) and is one of those single volumes containing a multitude of suggestions for household duties, regularity of cleaning rooms, cooking, the larder, menu planning, and general feminine decorum.

the Cook’s Bookcase has for sale many similar one-volume Woman’s Books for sale, including Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, The White House Cookbook, The Settlement Book, Woman’s Home Companion’s Household Book etc.  Call for more info (831) 251-9218