Simply from Scratch/Alicia Bessette: Reflections

It was raining the day I took this photograph—raining, and yet the sun was dialed in full blast behind the tears.  That's exactly the way I felt while reading Alicia Bessette's debut novel Simply from Scratch, due out in August from Dutton.  For this is a story about losses, but it is also (very much) a story about gains.  Zell has lost her husband to a terrible accident.  Into the house next has moved a little girl, Ingrid, who never has known her mother.  A quest to win the Desserts that Wa...