The Osceola Community Club

When Cassandra Burquette accompanies a group of middle-aged women on a day trip to the small Florida village where she grew up, her travels take her much farther than she could have foreseen -- back to 1958 to a long-forgotten Osceola (named for a war-mongering Seminole chief grabbed from beneath a white flag of truce -- shame on those disreputable Yankee skunks ) and the heat of an unforgettable summer that stirred her first womanly feelings. The sleepy little village is no more. All that remain are a few old buildings, including a used bookstore, where she finds a 1958 fundraising cookbook, Sauti Then Simmer, put together by the Osceola Community Club. In it are advertisements from merchants she remembers and recipes submitted by people she knew when she was a young girl. The recipes remind her of the townspeople and of the bittersweet summer in which she turned twelve, the same year the cookbook was published. The Osceola Community Club sizzles as only a small Southern village of the fifties can sizzle. In typical Southern fashion, everything in the community revolves around a tableful of traditions: edible, ethical, and moral. Readers are invited to sit at this table alongside the townsfolk during the preparations, the presentations, and the social implications that are cooked up, stirred up, and served up -- community-style -- for all to see. Come taste the completed recipes with tongue and heart. Pull up a chair. Grab that old cowhide-bottomed one Grandpa whittled.