Sorrows and Sub-texts

Recent posts have been about my book ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE,  coming from Covenant Communications next month. I've been sharing differing points of view from the Burnett family: Tom, Karen, Emily . . . This excerpt comes from a section narrated by Stephanie, the family's college-aged daughter. See if you can read the sub-text in the passage:

STEPHANIE BURNETT

            I slid into the booth at my favorite frozen yogurt shop, looked at my watch, and noted it was a couple of minutes fast according to the clock on the wall. A girl in an apron came by to remind me to place my order at the counter and I told her I was waiting for someone. Just then I saw Jessica at the entrance and jumped up with a grin.  

            Jess held out her arms for a hug as I drew near. I was grateful. It had been a while since we’d seen each other, and well, I wasn’t sure how happy she’d be about this meeting.  

            We hugged and then turned to the counter. “Order whatever you like,” I told her, quickly adding, “My treat.”  

Jess looked wary. “That’s not necessary, Steph. I can buy my own yogurt.”  

“I know you can, but you’re the one doing me a favor. Let me get this for you.”  

Jessica gave me a long, appraising look, but then she smiled. “Okay,” she answered. “Thanks.”  

We placed our orders and went to the booth I had chosen. It was the one we always preferred, back when we came here as a group of roommates, back when Jessica and Megan, Allie and I all lived together and occasionally came here for a cheap outing, back before . . .  

“We heard about your grandma,” Jessica said, derailing my thought train just when it might have crashed on its own. “Are you doing okay?” The expression on her face had a whole subtext written in the worry lines.  

“Yeah,” I said. “It was my great-grandmother actually, my dad’s Granny Adelaide. We’ll all miss her something awful, but she was more than a hundred years old. We couldn’t keep her forever.”  

“No, I guess not,” Jess said. Then she added, “This wasn’t your grandmother who had the, uh, problems?”  

“No. That was my Grandma Judith, my dad’s mom. She’s been gone for a long time. In fact, I don’t remember much about her—except for the problems.”  

“That’s what I thought, but Allie said—” She cut the thought off quickly, looking away, looking chagrined.  

I swallowed. “How is Allie?”  

“She’s good. She said to tell you she’s sorry about the loss in your family.”  

I gave Jess a long, long look. “Did she really say that, Jess, or are you just being diplomatic again?”  

Jess gave me an earnest smile. “She really did, Steph. She said she wanted you to know that she’s sorry about your grandma and she hopes you’re . . . doing okay.”  

“I am,” I answered, and then I realized I had been rubbing my fingers over the raised scars on my left arm, between my wrist and elbow. I sighed and dropped my arms to my sides. “I’m sad, but I’m okay.”

Susan Aylworth is the author of eight published novels, all currently available in digital form for various e-readers. Her ninth book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming from Covenant Communications in June. Her tenth novel, RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK, will soon be available as an original e-book, the seventh in the Rainbow Rock series. Find Susan at www.susanaylworth.com or follow her @SusanAylworth.

Romance and Comfort Food

My first eight novels fit tidily into the romance genre, but when I decided to write the story of the Burnett family, I knew it wouldn't--fit, that is. Now called ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, the story will be coming out in June, published by Covenant Communications. It tries to answer the question of how to repair a broken family.
That doesn't mean it won't have romantic moments, like this excerpt from Chapter 17, written in the point of view of family dad, Tom Burnett:

I filled a glass with milk, got out a fork, and sat down at the kitchen counter. That’s when I heard the bedroom door open and knew Karen was about to catch me red-handed, eating red beans and rice in the middle of the night—a violation of a small promise I’d made to myself to avoid eating between dinner one evening and breakfast the next day. Well, at least I wasn’t breaking a promise to anyone else. If my dad’s betrayal had done nothing else, it had taught me to keep the important promises, the ones I made to others.

“Hi, honey,” Karen said, her voice smoky with sleep.

“Hi, yourself.” I lifted my fork defiantly. Just let her say something.

“Couldn’t sleep, huh?” she asked. She must be postponing the inevitable assault on my dignity.

“No. You either?”

“I slept pretty well for a while.” She looked at the bowl of hot food and I knew what was coming next, but my sweetheart surprised me. “I don’t suppose you have any more of that?”

“Um, uh, no. No, this is the last.”

She sighed. “Pity. I’ll find something else then.”

I watched as she opened the refrigerator and started looking through its contents. “No comments about eating in the middle of the night?”

She turned and gave me a sweet, sleepy half smile. “Sometimes it’s good to break the rules,” she said. “Frankly, this seems like a good time for some comfort food, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I thought so.” I took another bite of the spicy leftovers. Comfort. That was it, exactly. Well, at least Karen understood that part.

“Oh, yeah. This will do it.” She came out of the refrigerator with her arms loaded and calmly went about making a sandwich from Friday’s meatloaf and two slices of wheat bread, spreading mayonnaise and catsup with abandon. “Yum, this looks great!” she announced as she put the condiments away and started toward the counter to sit beside me.

“You’re not obsessing about the calories?”

“Calories, schmalories. We worry about them all day every day. A little letdown under these rather extreme conditions might just help us remember we’re still alive and still need a little peace and comfort where we can find it—even in food.” She took a big bite. “Ummmm, that’s good!”

“Glad you’re enjoying it.”

We sat for a while, eating side by side in companionable silence. A few minutes later, my bowl was empty and Karen’s sandwich gone. I finished the last of my milk and—I couldn’t help it--I burped loudly. “Oops! Sorry. I guess the old stomach doesn’t necessarily agree with your philosophy about midnight comfort food.”

Karen rubbed her own middle. “My old stomach isn’t all that happy about it, either,” she said. “I think I’m going to help myself to some antacid. Shall I get some for you too?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She brought over a bottle of peppermint-flavored tablets and we sat quietly, chewing. In another minute, even that was gone. A moment of strained silence followed.

“Well? What’s next?” I asked her. “Do you think you can go back to sleep now?”

Karen arched one eyebrow. Her voice was smoky again, but not with sleep. “Come with me and I’ll help you sleep too,” she offered.

She always looked so sexy when she grinned like that. I couldn’t help remembering all the reasons why I loved this difficult, amazing woman. “You’ve got a deal,” I told her.

I put my arm around my sweetheart and led her back to our bed.

Susan Aylworth is the author of eight published novels, all currently available in digital form for various e-readers. Her ninth book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming from Covenant Communications in June. Her tenth novel, RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK, will soon be available as an original e-book, the seventh in the Rainbow Rock series. Find Susan at www.susanaylworth.com or follow her @SusanAylworth.

Observing Death

As I've mentioned here before (probably too often; sorry!), my book ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE is coming out in June, published by Covenant Communications. It's unusual for me because it's written from four different viewpoints. This excerpt comes from the viewpoint probably closest to my own, that of family mom Karen Burnett. Here she narrates her recollection of the hours after the passing of her husband's grandmother, Granny Adelaide.

I poured glasses full of chilled lemonade, moving strictly on autopilot. We had put away all the food that Emily and I had prepared for dinner because no one felt like eating, yet we all knew we needed something. I warmed some of the sourdough rolls leftover from last night’s dinner and asked Steph to whip up some lemonade. Tom said a quick blessing and we all began to eat, silently, everyone moving as if caught in slow motion.

The scene at the hospital was surreal. Since I became the president of our church Relief Society a couple of years ago, I’d seen death, yet it never failed to amaze me. When we visited with Granny that afternoon, she had looked about as ill as anyone I’ve ever seen. Then when we went back to the hospital that evening, she was no longer there. No, they hadn’t yet removed Granny’s body, but Granny was no longer there. I don’t know how anyone, especially any health professional, could see that change over and over and over again and still have any doubt that there is an eternal spirit, a life source that departs when death comes. The body didn’t even look much like Granny anymore. Still I felt her warmth, her humor, and I knew she wasn’t far away. I hoped she wasn’t getting too big a kick out of her final joke on us.

Susan Aylworth is the author of eight published novels, all currently available in digital form for various e-readers. Her ninth book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming from Covenant Communications in June. Her tenth novel, RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK, will soon be available as an original e-book, the seventh in the Rainbow Rock series. Find Susan at www.susanaylworth.com or follow her @SusanAylworth.

Differing Perspectives

My ninth published novel answers the question, "What kind of recipe do you need to mend a broken family?" Now titled ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, it will be released this June by Covenant Communications. For me it marks a departure from the sorts of novels I've written in the past and a dip into a different form of writing. ZUCCHINI PIE is a family story, written from the points of view of four different primary characters.


The story begins when century-old Granny Adelaide is taken to the hospital. The scene below is told in the perspective of Emily Burnett, the sixteen-year-old youngest child in the Burnett family.

I was humming to myself as I finished dressing the slaw and warming the peas. That was when the phone rang. I answered it and a business-like voice on the other end asked for Mr. Thomas Burnett. I knocked on the door of the office.

“Daddy?”

Mom opened the door. “What is it, Em?”

“There’s a phone call for Dad. It sounds important.”

Mom turned back into the office, a worried look on her face. There was some murmuring and then she asked me, “Do you know who it is?”

I shook my head.

From inside the office, I heard Dad say, “I’ll take it.”

I went back into the kitchen to hang up the phone, but before I put it down, I held the receiver to my ear, just to be sure Dad had answered before I hung it up, and that’s when I heard him say, “Oh no. When?”

I felt my heart jolt, but I couldn’t stop listening. “Just a few minutes ago,” the voice on the other end answered. “Would you or your family like to see her before we call the funeral home?”

Funeral home. My hands shook as I dropped the phone and I heard an awful noise. It took me a second to realize I was the one making it, and in that moment, it occurred to me that there were worse things than having my family miss my concert.

I had never known anyone who died before.

Susan Aylworth is the author of eight published novels, all currently available in digital form for various e-readers. Her ninth book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming from Covenant Communications in June. Her tenth novel, RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK, will soon be available as an original e-book, the seventh in the Rainbow Rock series. Find Susan at www.susanaylworth.com or follow her @SusanAylworth.

Old Route 66

Today's excerpt is from RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK, which is both the literal return for Marcie Carmody, whom readers met in Book 4, and a metaphorical return for me; this is the first Rainbow Rock book in...um...a few years. In this segment, Marcie is driving around the area, showing Holbrook, Arizona and its environs to Ryan Fields, a new attorney to the area who will soon be her direct supervisor. Ryan is speaking:

"Why don’t you show me a little of where Old Route 66 used to run and we’ll call it done.” 

“You’ve already seen part of it,” Marcie said. “You know Interstate 40 follows fairly close to the same path…” 

“Right. I just want to see what’s left of Route 66 in this area.” 

“Sure. Turn left here and I’ll give you the Route 66 tour—for a few miles, anyway.” 

“Left it is.” 

Marcie watched him carefully as he made the turn. She couldn’t help noticing the flex of his forearms, the strength in his biceps, the smooth curve of his cheek just waiting for her touch… Get a grip, Marcie, she chided herself. The man is off-limits. 

The little voice inside her argued, Shouldn’t he know that, too? The fact he had just made a second date for two days from now suggested he was having as much trouble remembering that as she was. Marcie, old girl, you’re going to have to watch yourself. You are already in deep tapioca here. She sighed and turned her attention back to Old Route 66. 

Susan Aylworth is the author of eight published novels, all currently available in digital form for various e-readers. Her ninth book, ZUCCHINI PIE: GRANNY'S RECIPE FOR LIFE, is coming from Covenant Communications in June. RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK will soon be available as an original e-book, the seventh in the Rainbow Rock series. Find Susan at www.susanaylworth.com or follow her @SusanAylworth.