Cherry Delight Pie

Most of the recipes I’ve saved from my grandmothers’ kitchens are written on torn pieces of paper, Post-it notes, the backs of envelopes, or in the margins of church bulletins. Because of that, there are a lot of recipes like this one for cherry pie -- recipes with a lot of sugar, minimal direction, and plenty of faith that it’ll all turn out right in the end. As Honey says: always trust the handwriting.

Hummingbird Cake

This is my favorite kind cake for a whole slew of reasons, practical and sentimental. I like a lot of flavors and different textures, quite literally, in my food, whether sweet or savory, and this cake delivers: we’ve got different kinds of fruit, nuts, spice, raisins, the tang of cream cheese, and plenty of sweetness. It’s like spice cake and carrot cake and Italian cream cake came together and had the best picnic. Because of its bright and cheery flavor and white frosting, I have always associated hummingbird cake with a Southern summertime.

Lea Anne’s Strawberry Cake (definitely a little story for this one, I’m sure)

My mom, Lea Anne, has been a working mom her whole life, so pockets of time for baking and other hobbies are rare. But, she would always make this strawberry cake for my dad on his birthday, because 1) strawberry is his favorite flavor and 2) his birthday is in June, peak strawberry season. This recipe embraces both sides of that history: intentional locally-sourced produce from Kentucky farmers markets and a cake mix in a box for ease and convenience. As Ina Garten says, you make a little, you buy a little.

Coconut Cake

This recipe has my grandmother written all over it, and not just because it’s in her recognizable handwriting. She was a fiercely loyal soul, and could hold a grudge just as well as she could a heavy cast iron skillet. This extended into her cooking, and she insisted on certain brands of ingredients -- and that attention to detail is probably why her cooking and baking have such a visceral personality in my memories. Here, it was Eagle Brand PET milk or nothing; she always kept cans on hand right next to the Winn-Dixie coffee mugs.

Jam Cake

This jam cake recipe is perhaps my grandmother’s favorite cake recipe, if not one of her top recipes of all time. She had a sweet tooth, so most of her saved recipes were desserts, so this recipe is also a reflection of what Southern cooking means to me: baking involved recipes and measurements, but savory cooking was more of an experiment or a feeling, a know-it-when-I-see-it method. My grandmothers had spiralbound community cookbooks, if they had cookbooks at all, but there was an art in the improvisation, and they always cooked via muscle memory.

One paragraph story about my family and cooking / tradition:

My mom’s side comes from West Virginia and my dad’s from Southern Kentucky. There were always very few men in the family, so I was raised by mostly women, like my two grandmothers (their favorite colloquial gems appear throughout the novel), and learned firsthand that in the South, food is a love language. As I worked on the novel, one of my grandmothers passed, and I inherited her immense assortment of kitchen wares. This included her collection of community cookbooks from across Kentucky, but also from her hometown of Marrowbone, KY. Once in a while in these books, I spot a familiar last name from my own family tree, like a grassroots, ancestral treasure hunt. I began collecting these old community cookbooks, which were usually published with neighborly fundraising and the efforts of local women’s organizations. These homegrown cookbooks tell powerful stories, not just in their recipes, but in the small anecdotes from the (nearly always) women contributors. When my grandmothers were growing up in the rural South, a woman’s name didn’t often appear front and center, but in these cookbooks, they do, and that’s how these artifacts became such a crucial inspiration behind Farewitch.

Playlist, in no particular order:

9 to 5 by Dolly Parton

Crisco by Miranda Lambert

W.I.T.C.H. by Devon Cole

I Remember Everything by Zach Bryan (feat. Kacey Musgraves)

Numb Little Bug by Em Beihold

Wondering Why by The Red Clay Strays

Too Sweet by Hozier

Taylor Swift

Anti-Hero

Honey

Tyler Childers (Kentucky!)

All Your’n

Shake the Frost

Help Me Make It Through the Night

5 Favorite Witches who inspired the Witches in the book:

BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE (1958) Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak), a witch living in New York City from the movie

KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE by Eiko Kandono (1985) Kiki, a young witch who begins a delivery service via broom

PRACTICAL MAGIC (1998) Aunt Jet (Dianne Wiest) and Aunt Frances (Stockard Channing), eccentric witches and whimsical aunts

A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness (2011) Diana Bishop, bookish and early-thirties witch in love with tall dark and handsome

AGATHA ALL ALONG (2024) Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), anti-hero witch and leader of a ragtag group of witches

Discussion questions for The Farewitch of Foxe Holler:

1.As Honey learns, recipes are made of ingredients that work together to create something greater than the taste of individual flavors. What are some ingredients in your life that have come together to form something larger than the sum of their parts?

2.Many of the characters in Farewitch are “messy millennials” still learning lessons they thought they should have learned earlier. What are some lessons you’re still learning that you expected to have learned already? Are there lessons we never fully learn?

3.While Farewitch is about family, it’s also about the other dear friends and neighbors we absorb into our orbits, our “found families.” Found families often develop unexpectedly on a journey--what are the crucial elements of a found family to you?

4.Honey and the Warlock have an age gap romance, and there are plenty of mentions of other kinds of gaps in the characters’ lives: gaps in knowledge, between differing expectations, between people, and between conflicting memories of the same history. What is a large “gap” in your life that maybe gave you the tools to bridge another gap?

5.The characters in Farewitch often find their feelings and tastes change over the course of a meal (the novel). What’s a flavor or food you loved as a child that you don’t enjoy now? Likewise, what is something you didn’t like as a child but that you adore now?

6.Honey describes her apron as armor. What’s your armor, and is it removable? It if is, do you remove it in front of others, or only when you’re by yourself?

7.Farewitch navigates the concepts of legacy, living up to family history, and earning the reputation of our ancestors. What would you say are the most prevalent elements of your own family legacy?

8.An important question for Honey that appears directly in the text courtesy of her friend Silas (page 233) is: When is the last time you did something for the first time?

9.Farewitch is set in the South, specifically a small town in Kentucky bordering on Appalachia. Yet, the theme of community can be found in many settings and stories, both fictional and in our own lives. What are some aspects of where you grew up that you only realized were universal once you left?

10.In the narrative arc of a story, the insecurities that spurred a character to take action often transform into new motivations, so that our characters can end up somewhere different from where they started. What is a change in your life that triggered a journey from your “A” to your “B”?

11.Farewitch largely centers on the South as a setting and atmosphere, but someone’s “south” might be someone else’s “north.” What is a “south” to you that you think might be a “north” to someone else?

12.The language and prose in Farewitch involves a lot of colloquialisms unique to its setting and the author. What was an undeniable fixture of your childhood that you only realized later in life was actually a colloquial nuance of your unique upbringing?