Friendship Cake: A Novel [Hardcover]

Lynne Hinton (Author)

Book Description

Series: Hope Springs | Publication Date: April 26, 2000

Here in the country, women grew up learning to cook before they were tall enough to reach the stove. It was the mother's and the grandmother's responsibility to make sure all the girls in the family could make a meal out of one strip of meat and a cup of beans. So we learned to cook. And we learned to be creative. We learned how to stretch dough across two weeks at three squares a day. We learned how to make soup from bones and old potatoes. And we learned to knead our sorrows and our dreams into loaves of bread and our worthiness into cherry pies and fatty pork chops."
--from "Friendship Cake"

Good humor, tender moments, and life lessons abound in this heartwarming portrait of small-town Southern life that is anything but simple and quiet. Five churchgoing women from Hope Springs, North Carolina, animate this humorous, poignant tale of coming to terms with one's weaknesses, honoring the fragility of life, loving passionately, laughing through tears, and thinking with the heart.

The cast of colorful characters includes: freshman pastor Charlotte Stewart, who experiences a crisis of faith; no-nonsense Margaret Peele, a widow and town confidante; sharp-tongued Louise Fisher, who has loved another woman, Roxie, for over forty years and finally gets to show it by caring for her in the last stages of Alzheimer's; Jessie Jenkins, the only African American in an all-white church; and busybody Beatrice Newgarden, who turns out to be the most solid friend to them all.

As these five very different women come together to create a church cookbook, they quickly become a source of solace, support, and strength for each other. Each struggling to make sense of her life--her past" herrelationships, her faith--the women share much more than recipes; they share their passions, loves, heartbreaks, and hopes. Celebrating together and mourning together, they develop a deeper understanding of and compassion for each other and a genuine appreciation for the softness of heart and toughness of spirit that joins them as women. Just as surely as delectable Southern foods such as sweet potato casserole, prune cake, pecan pie, banana pudding, and corn relish sustain the body, it becomes evident that friendship nourishes the soul. The women end up with renewed faith, rekindled spirits, and the ingredients for true and lasting friendship.

Here are timeless truths--about the complexities of faith, the virtues of friendship, the resilience of the human spirit, and good living in the face of a changing world. A homespun tale sprinkled with grace and peppered with humor, "Friendship Cake" serves up comfort food for the soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

How many Southern women does it take to put together a cookbook? Five, in Hinton's sincere but frothy debut novel, in which several female congregants of the appropriately named Hope Springs Community Church in North Carolina decide to create a cookbook; each has her own special recipe to share and a story to tell. On the cookbook committee are pragmatic Margaret, whose down-home wisdom makes her the community confidant; 63-year-old Louise, nursing the unrequited love of her life, another woman, through Alzheimer's; Beatrice, with a finger in everyone else's pie; Jessie, the only black woman in the all-white congregation; and Reverend Charlotte Stewart, their first woman preacher. The project originates as a form of female bonding through food, but as the committee holds meetings to review their progress, a lot more is stirred up than soups and stews. Also on the table are death and sex, friendship and love. The characters introduce themselves in the opening chapters, and their voices are like a potluck dinner, unsophisticated and oddly comforting. Hinton, herself a North Carolina pastor, successfully endows Charlotte with all of the self-doubts that a cleric might feel facing her first congregation. Mostly, though, this is thin fare, with complex issues like interracial marriage and the tragic death of a child resolved by one easy remedy: love. There are 17 recipes included, but these are also pretty basic--banana pudding, relish, grits--leaving readers to wish there were something as satisfying as fried green tomatoes on the menu. Agent, Sally McMillan. 10-city author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The reaction of the Hope Springs Community Church women's group to the idea of writing a cookbook is lukewarm at best until Beatrice breaks down and confesses that she came up with the idea in hopes that sharing a project will make them better friends. They are an unusual group: Beatrice, the town gossip and make-up artist for the funeral home; Margaret, a reclusive widow; tough Louise, who needs the strength of others as the woman she's secretly loved for 40 years enters the final stages of Alzheimer's; Jessie, an African American, who attended a white church on a dare and found a stronger commitment to the Lord; and Charlotte, the young pastor, who tries to be everything to everyone and risks losing her faith along the way. As these women share recipes and a love of the Lord, they make a friendship cake to last till the end of their lives. Hinton (Meditations for Walking) tackles issues dividing churches today, particularly homosexuality and interracial relationships, in a caring and forthright manner. A deceptively simple first novel; for all collections.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1st edition (April 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688171478
• ISBN-13: 978-0688171476
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,077,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CHARMING! More, more!, June 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Friendship Cake: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is one of the most charming novels I've read in recent years. More than that, it is a satisfying, complete story of women's friendships that manages to avoid becoming sticky-sweet in the process. The author is to be commended for avoiding melodrama and cloying conclusions. I came to know and love each character in this book. Hinton's use of recipes, by the way, goes far beyond gimmickry; each recipe is a true reflection of its owner's personality, and the "cookbook" unifying plot of the novel further justifies their use. I would love to see sequels continuing the lives, loves, and misadventures of the delightful damsel denizens of Hope Springs, North Carolina!

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book for summer reading., May 28, 2000

By 

Barbara O'Neill - See all my reviews

This review is from: Friendship Cake: A Novel (Hardcover)

In the style of Patricia Gaffney's Saving Graces, Friendship Cake is a real-life novel whose focus is women, the lives they live and the problems they face.

Friendship Cake takes 5 disparate church women and throws them together in the course of putting together a church cookbook. But, it's more than recipes that get tested. Friendship, love and trust are put to the test over and over as the ladies learn to accept the others --- and themselves --- for who they are.

I didn't know what to expect from this novel, which is written by a pastor in North Carolina and I have to say that I do hope Pastor Hinton has more stories like this tucked away, just waiting to be written. Quite a wonderful book.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faith, hope and love still do work..., September 27, 2000

By 

Michele Caprario (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Friendship Cake: A Novel (Hardcover)

Through an endearing story of women in church community, Lynne Hinton helps prove that with faith, hope and love (and women friends' gooding cookin' and senses of humor!) all things can be survived- sometimes even brought back to be made 'shiny and new'.Loved this story and characters. Can't wait to read the author's next book...