"One Book Bernardsville" Author to Speak at Bernardsville Library

Laura Schenone, the award-winning author of the second annual “One Book Bernardsville” selection, “The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family,” will speak about her book at Bernardsville Public Library on Wednesday, October 14 at 7:00 pm. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Her book is also the 2015 “One Community One Book” selection for the Morristown Festival of Books. Advance registration is requested for this event.

In “The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken,” Ms. Schenone undertakes what turns out to be a difficult quest to retrieve her great grandmother’s ravioli recipe, reuniting with relatives in the United States and Italy as she goes. She decided to be a writer when she was twelve years old. “Originally, I wanted to be a poet, or at the very least a novelist,” she says. “I spent many years writing short stories and working as a freelance writer and editor for newspapers, publishing companies, and nonprofits. Then I fell in love with food. It happened when my husband got a job that landed us in rural New Jersey. We lived in a big old pre-Civil War farmhouse and started a huge vegetable garden. While bending over my string beans and digging up potatoes, I began to wonder about food and its meanings throughout history. It occurred to me that through food I could learn about peoples’ lives and write about many things.”

From this came her first book, “A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances.” It begins with Native American women cooking in earth ovens and goes to the present day and our time-pressed microwaving lives. It won a James Beard Award in 2004. Next, Ms. Schenone began to look for her own personal history and wrote “The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken.” She lives in New Jersey, with her husband and sons, not far from Hoboken.

There will be three opportunities to discuss the book at library book groups. On Tuesday, October 13 at 7:00 pm, Library Director April L. Judge will lead the first discussion of the book. The Memoirs and Coffee book group, led by Pat Kennedy-Grant, will meet in the morning of Tuesday, October 27 at 10:30 am, and Evelyn Fischel will lead the discussion at Saturday Samplers on Saturday, November 7 at 3:30 pm. No sign-up is needed to join the library discussions. If a local book club is interested in participating in “One Book Bernardsville,” contact Director April Judge, and a discussion leader from the library staff will be assigned to the group to lead the conversation at a mutually convenient time.

Detailed information on all the events is available at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org/one-book-2015, or call the library at 908-766-0118. All the programs are free. To sign up for programs, go to www.bernardsville.library.org or call 908-766-0118.