tion>Praise for Erin McGraw
For The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard:
“Vivid, lively, and quite, quite wonderful, McGraw’s story is a meticulous evocation of a time, a place, and an absolutely unforgettable woman. I loved every word.” —Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club
“At the heart of this beautifully written, brilliantly plotted novel is McGraw’s heroine—the talented, spirited, adventurous Nell. From the opening sentence I would have followed her anywhere. The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard is an irresistible and deeply compelling portrait of a young woman sewing her way to a new life.” —Margot Livesey, author of The Missing World
For The Good Life:
“Erin McGraw has a consistently winning stance in her wide-ranging stories—she is insightful, funny, deeply humane. I love the way her mind works.” —Amy Hempel
“I love these stories about nice normal people trying—and failing—to cling to their fondest delusions. Erin McGraw brings her wonderful characters from dark into light with deftness, humor, and incredible kindness.” —Molly Giles
For The Baby Tree:
“I have long been a fan of Erin McGraw’s fine fiction, and her splendid new novel has only deepened my devotion. With seemingly effortless skill, The Baby Tree brings together complex issues of faith and morality in a plot that is by turns funny and serious, romantic and menacing, but always suspenseful. I only wish that her feisty heroine, Pastor Kate, lived next door.” —Margot Livesey
Also by Erin McGraw:
The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard
The Good Life
The Baby Tree
Lies of the Saints
Bodies at Sea
BETTER FOOD FOR A BETTER WORLD
A novel
Erin McGraw
BETTER FOOD FOR A BETTER WORLD
Copyright © 2013 Erin McGraw. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Slant
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
isbn 13: 978-1-62032-668-8
eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-534-3
Cataloging-in-Publication data:
McGraw, Erin (1957– )
Better food for a better world : a novel / Erin McGraw.
x + 232 p. ; 23 cm.
isbn 13: 978-1-62032-668-8
1. Restaurants — California — Fiction. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) — Fiction. I. Title.
ps3563.c3674 b4 2013
Manufactured in the USA.
To Andrew
Acknowledgements
Special thanks are due to Phil Stephens and Sheila McKenna, for teaching me about music and performance, and to Leslie Cooksy, for teaching me about agriculture.
Heartfelt thanks also to Greg Wolfe, who forgives me over and over and who has the energy of five normal people. To Julie Mullins, my great gratitude for her sharp eye and exquisite taste.
First and last thanks always to Andrew. Always.
Marriages to marriages
are joined, husband and wife
are plighted to all
husbands and wives,
any life has all lives
for its delight.
—wendell berry
One
Vivy
What was the saddest thing in the world? Listening to Hank Shank—“Take it to the bank”—play “We Shall Overcome” on the banjo. Standing at the back of the superheated room, Vivy Jilet studied a wrinkle on the banjo’s grubby face and wondered whether Hank had made the instrument himself. Its stumpy neck looked like a finger cut off at the joint, and the string ends bristled up aggressively from the tuning pegs.
“We are not afrai-ai-aid,” Hank Shank quavered, plunking dull, bottom-heavy notes that had only a nodding acquaintance with the ones coming out of his mouth. To listen was painful, and Vivy guessed there was plenty more to come. Hank Shank was singing verses she had never heard, and wore the folk singer’s dolefully sincere expression, the one that promised listeners they would be spared none of the travails of the people.
She resettled herself, leaning back against the hot wall. The situation would not improve when he stopped singing. Since taking the stage half an hour ago, Hank Shank had filled the spaces between songs with stern lectures about the evils of consumerism, urging members of the dwindling audience not to let themselves be co-opted. “To resist society’s consumerist pressure is a revolutionary action,” he said.
Suppressing a yawn, Vivy wondered whether Hank Shank had updated his rhetoric since 1968. Then she wondered whether he realized he was on a stage in an ice cream store, and that his act was being punctuated, not by cries of “Stick it to the man!” but by the chirping of a cash register.
If the cash register had been chirping more often, Vivy wouldn’t have cared about Hank. He was performing here at Natural High Ice Cream—Better Food for a Better World, the sign promised—because Nancy Califfe, one of the store’s six owners, had decided it needed a gala to celebrate its third birthday. “Something special,” she had said, “to draw people in. I know the perfect person.”
Vivy should have known right then. If Nancy could be counted on for anything, it was her flawless reliability when it came to issues of marketing: always, always wrong. Vivy and the other partners spent most of their time blocking Nancy’s tone-deaf ideas—the raffle whose first prize was twenty-five cubic feet of mulch, the community pitch-in day to help the partners clean out the storeroom.
“What
