Friendship Bread
by Darien Gee
April 2011 Book Pick

The small town of Avalon, a suburb on the way to Chicago, is a quiet, unassuming kind of place. Many people are born and raised, and then raise families of their own in its limits. The people are friendly and neighborly (for the most part!), and know just about everything there is to know about the next person. It's small town life.

When Julia Evarts and her daughter Gracie receive a few slices of Amish Friendship Bread along with a starter kit, they have no idea the impact this small loaf will have on their lives. The bread leads Julia to Hannah and Madeline, two women whose friendships help Julia recover from a personal tragedy that has rocked the foundation of her life. Little does she realize that she is helping them recover from their own heartaches as well.

The Friendship Bread takes on a life of its own, spreading through the town like wildfire. Its exsistence changes everybody it touches in small, but meaningful ways leading up to an act of kindness that puts Avalon on the map and the three womens' lives forever changed.

On top of all this is the intriguing aspect of Amish Friendship Bread. It truly does have an almost cult-like following, and one this reviewer is happy to join! My first bag of starter is sitting on the counter now and I've been plotting all the fun ways I plan to give my kits out in 10 days from now. Book Clubs will not only have a zillion things to talk about, they will have a delicious treat to share while discussing!

Discussion Questions

1. Is Julia wrong for blaming Livvy for what happened to Josh? Why or why not?
2. How do you feel about Edie? Did she grow on you by the end of the story?
3. What are the chances you are intriuged enough by the bread to try your own hand at it?

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Darien Gee, author of Friendship Bread

Avalon seems like the perfect place to live! Is it modeled after a real town or did you imagine it into being?

When I started writing this novel, I started with the characters first-namely Julia Evarts-and as the characters developed, so did the town of Avalon. I have a special affection for small communities and I know the simple comfort that it brings. I've been living in a rural community for the past 11 years, and I knew this was home the minute I arrived. I wanted to convey this same sense of "coming home" or, more accurately, "knowing home," in the novel, too. I started with the emotional aspect first, and then "built" the town from that.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Darien Gee, author of Friendship Bread

As a mother, Julia's story is tragic to the point where I almost couldn't handle it at times. You are a mother of three yourself; how were you able to write about losing a child? Can a parent, a marriage, a family ever survive it and be happy afterwards?

I think the only real answer is that it's complicated. That some can and some can't, for a host of reasons that you can't quantify or judge. When I started writing the novel, I saw grief hanging over Julia but didn't know why. When I found out, I was in shock but I kept writing, because it was my job to tell her story and I wanted to see, too, how it would turn out. I think being a mother made the thought of such a loss even more acute, but I didn't want to avoid it just because it was difficult. I've since spoken with women who have experienced a similar loss, and one thing is clear: everyone is different. For me, I wanted to honor Julia's grief as her own, that how she experienced it was her business, and that no one can dictate a timetable of "healing" for another person.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Darien Gee, author of Friendship Bread

The underlying theme of female friendship is the driving force for these characters. Explain how vital women are in each other's lives and whether or not you find this relationship more fulfilling to a woman than a marriage.

I don't believe it's one or the other. Friendships serve one purpose, and marriage serves another. They support us in different ways. Female friendships are like a sisterhood. In this novel, the women come together in the most unlikely sort of way-over scones and Amish Friendship Bread in the delicious quiet of Madeline's Tea Salon or sandwiches and pizza outside the Avalon Gazette-and bond almost instantly even though they are all very different women. But the connection is there, and they all feel it, the reader included. You just know, in your heart, that these women are going to be friends forever.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Darien Gee, author of Friendship Bread

It is not often where I read a story with so many points of view but still feel connected to many of the characters. Obviously, we get to know Julia, Hannah, Madeline, Livvy, and Edie the best, but I still felt a bond with Connie and Mark and found characters like Bridget, Mona and A.A.much deeper than simple two-dimensional walk-ons. Can you tell us about how you get into the mind and personality of each character in order to write them so realistically?

I love the anecdotal characters of Friendship Bread. They were a happy accident that ended up being an integral part of the structure of the book. I found they served two purposes: one, they showed how the bread was moving through the town and touching the lives of everyone in it, and two, they gave us a break from the intensity of the primary narrative. These characters were fun to write, because I got to stand in their shoes and just witness their lives spilling onto the page. I could see how their peripheral lives intersected with my main characters in an indirect, but sometimes profound, way. It was a good reminder about how interconnected we all are, and that we are not alone even when we think we are.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Darien Gee, author of Friendship Bread

I love the fact that the town was united by its baking of Amish Friendship Bread. It was a stroke of pure genius to incorporate different points of view throughout the novel to show how this phenomenon touched each person's life in a small, yet significant way. How did you come up with this idea? Are you in a Friendship Bread club?

Two years ago my daughter brought home a Ziploc bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter and some slices of the bread. That was the first time I'd ever heard of it. I actually told her to forget it, that we weren't going to do it, but then I tasted the bread and I was hooked. As I was standing in my kitchen, I saw a woman with strawberry blond hair, regarding the bag of starter with the same initial apprehension. That was Julia. And in both our cases, this bread has changed our lives.

As for being in a club, well, I think I've formed my own-virtually, at least. I decided to forgo the traditional author/book website and opted for a kitchen format instead. I dubbed it the Friendship Bread Kitchen (www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com) and it was supposed to be a casual, fun thing, but like the starter, has grown exponentially since day one. We have over 100 Amish Friendship Bread recipes, and are adding new ones everyday. Our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/fbkitchen), the place where I first started sharing recipes, has grown to almost 20,000 fans since last year. It's an amazing community of people, and we're having a lot of fun talking about the book and all things Amish Friendship Bread.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Darien Gee, author of Friendship Bread

The back of the book mentions that you are working on your "next Avalon novel." Can you tell us anything about it?

It's called Memory Keeping and picks up about six months after Friendship Bread ends, in the summer of the following year. Some familiar characters are back and some peripheral characters, like Connie, have moved to the forefront, and there are newcomers, too. There isn't that much Amish Friendship Bread in this book, but we've moved onto something just as appealing: scrapbooking, thanks in part to Bettie Shelton, founder and president of the Avalon Scrapbooking Society. It does move through the town but in a completely different way and for completely different reasons than the first novel.

BCQ: Is it possible Madeline will leave the Tea Salon to Connie when she passes or decides to move on?

Darien: Anything is possible but you'll have to read the next book to find out.

Book Club Discussion: Interview with Darien Gee, author of Friendship Bread

We have reviewed a book of yours under the pen name, Mia King. Would you mind telling us a little bit about your two writing selves?

I started my writing career as Mia King, and published three trade paperback titles with Berkley Books in 2007 (Good Things), 2008 (Sweet Life), and 2009 (Table Manners). At the time my first book was published, my husband also had his first nonfiction book coming out with a Harry N. Abrams imprint. His name (Darrin Gee) is so close to my own (Darien Gee) that I decided to change mine. I had originally written Good Things for the romance market, so writing under a pen name wasn't that unusual.

When I wrote Friendship Bread, however, both the writing and subject matter seemed so different from my Mia King titles that we (my agent and I) decided I would write it under my own name. It's my intention to continue writing both Mia King and Darien Gee books-I love them both and it's very clear to me what's a Mia King title and what's a Darien Gee title. Still, I remember signing my first Mia King books and I kept signing my real name-I ruined a lot of stock in those early days. Now, after three years of having signed everything Mia, I'll be faced with the opposite challenge: remembering to sign Friendship Bread as Darien.

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