Introduction

With the glass kitchen,

Linda Francis Lee has served up a novel that is about the courage

it takes to follow your heart and be yourself.

A true recipe for life.

Portia Cuthcart never intended to leave Texas. Her dream was to run the Glass Kitchen restaurant her grandmother built decades ago. But after a string of betrayals and the loss of her legacy, Portia is determined to start a new life with her sisters in Manhattan . . . and never cook again. But when she moves into a dilapidated brownstone on the Upper West Side, she meets twelve-year-old Ariel and her widowed father Gabriel, a man with his hands full trying to raise two daughters on his own. Soon, a promise made to her sisters forces Portia back into a world of magical food and swirling emotions, where she must confront everything she has been running from. What seems so simple on the surface is anything but when long-held secrets are revealed, rivalries exposed, and the promise of new love stirs to life like chocolate mixing with cream.

The Glass Kitchen is a delicious novel, a tempestuous story of a woman washed up on the shores of Manhattan who discovers that a kitchen--like an island--can be a refuge, if only she has the courage to give in to the pull of love, the power of forgiveness, and accept the complications of what it means to be family.

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Excerpt

One

ON THE MORNING her sister went missing, Portia Cuthcart woke up to thoughts of blueberries and peaches.

The taste of fruit filled her mouth, so sweet, so real, as if she’d been eating in her dreams. With a groggy yawn, she scooted out of bed. She pulled on her favorite fluffy slippers and big-girl’s robe, then shuffled into the tiny kitchen of the double-wide trailer on the outskirts of Willow Creek, Texas. Without thinking about what she was doing, she pulled blueberries from the icebox and peaches from the fruit bin. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

How would you describe the family dynamic in the Kane household? What role does each family member play? How would you describe the dynamic between Portia, Olivia and Cordelia?

On page 85, Portia describes a time when, after a fight, she and her sisters filled jars with homemade strawberry preserves. She says that, “the preserves had been the bridge back to each other…” Can you think of times in your own life when the acts of dining or cooking have played a larger role?

Did you have any ideas or guesses about what might have happened during the car accident that Ariel was trying so hard to avoid and hide? Were you surprised when Ariel revealed the truth about what happened?

When Ariel finds her mother’s memory box, she realizes that, “she couldn’t hide anymore from the stuff she didn’t want to know”. There are several characters that, throughout this story, have trouble facing various truths. Which characters, and what are they hiding from?

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Recommended to book clubs by 4 of 6 members.

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