It is 1943, and Italy is in turmoil. Stella Fortuna Servi, a young Jewish woman living in the Tuscan town of Pitigliano, struggles to cope with the dramatic changes in her life. Although her family’s roots in Pitigliano go back centuries, they are now confronting persecution by the Fascist regime, which is allied with Nazi Germany. Her father’s prosperous business is destroyed, and his role as rabbi becomes increasingly difficult, even desperate. Stella’s story is a gripping chronicle of sacrifice and courage, as Stella and her family try to evade capture. In a parallel narrative, Italian Jewish immigrant Edda Machlin adapts to a new life in post war suburban New York. Machlin is based on the cookbook author Edda Machlin Servi (1926 – 2019), and the classic recipes that she compiled and promoted are interwoven throughout the novel.
Like Wafers in Honey is fast-paced and taut with dramatic tension. Leah Eskin’s characters are sharply delineated, each one adapting to the intolerable in a distinctive way. Stella’s father performs a range of jobs for his non-Jewish neighbors, but his remuneration is never enough. One woman sees him as “her bookkeeper, her mediator, her scribe, settling a warm brown egg in his palm.” Barely able to support his family, and warned that they may be deported to an unknown fate, he is reluctant to leave those who need him. Stella and her siblings undertake a journey, disguising their identities and seeking temporary shelter. She no longer knows whom she can trust, as anyone might betray her.
For Edda, a fortunate survivor, the haven of Westchester and New York City is marked by different difficulties. Her husband, Eugene, is supportive and loving, but Edda feels alienated by her new environment. Many of Eugene’s friends, some based on historical figures, are involved in the movements for social change that defined the 1960s. Both timelines are strengthened by accurate details, although Edda’s memory of chanting her parsha, Torah portion, for a bat mitzvah ceremony would not have been part of Jewish ritual in that era or place. Asked by the members of her synagogue’s sisterhood to bake hamantaschen, Edda balks. Neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic, she identifies with the Italkim from her homeland. Readers can compare these “dry triangles,” to the fried orecchi di Aman (Haman’s ears) that she prepares; the recipe includes oil, rum, and grated lemon.
Eskin’s prose style is built around exquisitely accurate metaphors, many based on feminine creativity. Hiding in the forest, Stella feels embraced by the pine trees, their “green needles and resin scent as comforting as Nonna’s quilt.” When she and her brother take refuge in a cave filled with doves, she feels the birds’ “almond eyes” staring at them. A recipe for Il Bollo, anise “bread birds,” follows this passage. Not only the landscape, but people themselves are imagined as the products of artisans, as in the act of knitting. “The knits, their faces open and attentive, were children. The purls, gazing away, were adults … The fabric formed a family, a tribe, a people bound together. Cut one stitch, unravel the whole.”
By the novel’s end, the two narrative strands become one. Stella Fortuna’s luck and fortitude endure, and Edda finds purpose in teaching others about the foods that nurtured her.
Emily Schneider writes about literature, feminism, and culture for Tablet, The Forward, The Horn Book, and other publications, and writes about children’s books on her blog. She has a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures.
