Love & Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love by Kim Fay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a pleasure to be able to wholeheartedly recommend a book! This is a perfect little gem with “all the feels” and brilliant food writing, also. The tastes leap off the page. I can see why so many women have fallen in love with it. I started with a chip on my shoulder about it, however.
When I picked it up from the library, I was shocked (and disappointed) to find a novella instead of the promised novel. At 189 pages, including recipes, the author says she designed it to be read in one sitting; since I usually read my novels in one sitting, I had to stretch it out, the way one savors a delicious meal. It’s that good.
If you were a woman alive in the 1960s or 70s, you will relate to everything in this book. If you’re from the Western part of our country, you’ll relate even more. It starts out with a young woman from LA writing a fan letter to a columnist of a Pacific Northwest magazine.
Correspondence continues, and friendship ensues. There’s a nostalgia, not from the historical setting—it was not a simpler time—but from the exchanged letters: longer and deeper than the quick texts and posts common in today’s social media. Perhaps it was a less hectic time, a less suspicious time, when it was easier to find friendship.
You will certainly wonder at how much has changed since then, and how much hasn’t.
Imogene, the columnist, was married in 1922; Joan, the fan, graduated college sometime recently when the book starts in 1962. Immy lives in Seattle and on Whidby Island; Joan in cosmopolitan California. As they exchange food journeys and recipes, they discover that kindred spirits have no age, and intergenerational friendship is a marvel. They discover that food makes friends across cultures as well as across generations. While food is central to the novel, it’s really an ode to friendship. So many amazing things in life unfold when we dare to explore another’s heart. Friendship enhances our lives—like spices enhance food—bringing new perspectives and experiences, influences and knowledge. And sometimes you get those friendships that are life-changing.
I’m sure you will laugh and cry along with Immy and Joan—it’s like a Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for grownups, and I want to buy it for all my friends. Highly recommended!

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