With the lyrical precision of Annie Dillard and the exquisite food writing of M.F.K. Fisher, Gabrielle Myers takes us on a Northern California idyll – an internship at the Tip Top Farm and Produce in Vacaville. Here, the beauty of the land – light streaming through fig branches, carnelian tomatoes exploding in front of rows of sweet peas – is tended by the mysterious frenetic Farmer and her companion, Baker. Together with their intern Gabrielle, the trio tends a landscape full with sustenance and life. Their days are filled with back-breaking farm labor and their nights are alive with the freshest, most creative meals imaginable. At night, Gabi lays in her yurt pondering her mother’s suicide attempt, working on stories to tell herself to make it alright, while just up the hill another mind, busy as a hive, fights a storm of loss and sorrow that threatens to shatter Eden. And what of these stories we tell ourselves? Myers asks. Sometimes, they can’t be rewritten.
Gabrielle is an Associate Professor of English at San Joaquin Delta College, writer, and chef living in the Sacramento Valley of California.
Her poems and essays have been published in professional journals and literary magazines. She coauthored a nutrition book, The New Prostate Cancer Nutrition Book. Access links to her poems, essays, and recipe blog through her website: www.gabriellemyers.com.
