I meant to write this post before Thanksgiving. Clearly, I didn’t get around to it. Sorry. But since I was thrilled to recently run across this well-loved secondhand copy of Cranberry Thanksgiving, a book I fell for when I was a little girl in New Jersey, I still want to blog about it. You are what you read.

I also enjoy cranberry sauce maybe too much, so maybe this book has had undue influence on my eating habits as well.

The book shares the story of young Maggie and her grandmother who live adjacent to a New England cranberry bog. Grandmother is well known for her famous cranberry bread that she made every Thanksgiving. She guards her recipe carefully. When Maggie invites a friend, Mr. Whiskers, to share the holiday meal with them, Grandmother is irritated that the man she considers uncouth and overly hairy is coming to dinner.

She prefers Mr. Horace, a well-dressed man with a gold cane who is nevertheless alone for Thanksgiving; she invites him to eat with them. And she doesn’t trust Mr. Whiskers. Not to spoil the story, but the prized recipe nearly gets stolen and it turns out that Mr. Horace owns a bakery, so…

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re feeling like doing some post-Thanksgiving baking.

Sorry, no great and grand lesson here. No writing instruction to speak of. Just a good memory, a heartwarming book about people not being who they appear to be, and what may well be a tasty recipe. If you try it, let me know. Alas, I haven’t tried it yet.