Synopses & Reviews
A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade — with the best food ever served aboard a pirate's ship.
The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.
To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he's making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.
But Mabbot — who exerts a curious draw on the chef — is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot's madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicures adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story — with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
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Praise for The Great Days
“Accomplished and enormously powerful.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“With lyrical, confident prose, Brown makes Augusts dark journey a harrowing, convincing look into the heart of cult life that should linger with readers.” —Publishers Weekly
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About the Author
Eli Brown studied painting and sculpture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and received his MFA in fiction writing from Mills College. He now lives in Oakland, where he studies American Sign Language, gardens, and leads workshops on fermentation. His first novel, The Great Days, won the Fabri Prize for Literature.