Julia's Kitchen (review)

Eleven-year-old Cara is such a lifelong worrier that she feels her worries keep God watching and ensuring the safety of her family ("I figured I was God's helper. I worried, and he swooped in to take care of everything"). That belief founders when a house fire takes the lives of Cara's mother and little sister, leaving Cara, who had been sleeping overnight at her friend's house, on her own with her father. A devastated Cara struggles to understand the event spiritually ("I used to think God was my partner. But what kind of partner would let this happen?") and literally, since her father refuses to talk about the event, leaving Cara to pick up crucial details from newspapers and passing comments. Also painful are the continuing calls to Cara's mother's home baking business, Julia's Kitchen, but Cara eventually finds herself accepting a baking commission and coming closer to her much-missed mother thereby. The story is tactfully told, yet the emotional honesty is bracing—about religious doubt in the face of tragedy, about the way adults can shut out child survivors, and about the way even best friends can tire of mourning. It's a nice touch that Cara was very much her mother's girl, so that Cara's not only faced with the adjustment to a tragedy but the realignment of a relationship with a parent. While the redemption of her mother's business is a bit of a stretch, there's insightful acknowledgment of the way something like cooking, with its craftsmanship and sensory evocations, can provide a comforting connection with people we've lost (Cara finally accepts her grandmother's help in baking challah for a much-missed proper Shabbat dinner). Readers will appreciate the book's poignant and sympathetic depiction of bereavement and its hopeful message of a legacy that can transcend separation.