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A Curse So Dark and Lonely

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Brigid Kemmerer

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“To the residents of this small southern town, the past is more than history, it is ancestry. It is a compilation of family stories, told and retold, from one generation to the next. It’s old brown photographs framed in silver on the piano. It’s grandmother’s dishes and the family home and ancient trees planted ages ago that still shade the porch and scrape the knees of children who climb them. It’s stables that have never been without horses and hay and Jack Russell Terriers. It’s gardens that have their roots in the 1800s and their fresh-cut blossoms on this evening’s dinner table. It’s an unbroken thread of memories and families and love. And the distinction between past and present often becomes blurred, the past sometimes superimposed over the present in a decidedly unique way.”

HistorySmall TownPast And PresentGardensSouthernersStablesFamily StoriesSouthern Town
Book:The Rhythm of Selby
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“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.”

SmellScentNew OrleansLouisianaAlligatorsMagnoliasFrench QuarterHoneysuckleDecaturDixie Beer
Book:Jitterbug Perfume
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“Honeysuckle iced petals,' scoffed one John Bull, spying my menu. 'I should as soon eat a bouquet of flowers. You must serve me solid belly timber, madame, nothing else.' Yet in one week I had tempted the old duffer with a restoring quintessence of veal. Then at dessert I caught him licking his spoon like a schoolboy as he scooped up a flower of my own exquisite honeysuckle ice.”

DessertPetalsHoneysuckleIced
Book:An Appetite for Violets
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“The clouds had shifted, the moon was almost ripe, and her hair had turned to silver in its glaze. He'd been glad she hadn't caught him staring. Lucky for Tom, she'd crouched on the ground and started digging about in the rubble. He went nearer, curious as to what had claimed her focus, and saw that somehow, in the jumble of London's broken streets, she'd found a tangle of honeysuckle, fallen to the ground after its fence rattlings were removed but growing still. She picked a sprig and threaded it through her hair, humming a strange and lovely tune as she did so. When the sun had begun its rise and they'd climbed the stairs to his flat, she'd filled an old jam jar with water and put the sprig in it, on the sill. For nights after, as he lay alone in the warm and the dark, unable to sleep for thoughts of her, he'd smelled its sweetness. And it had seemed to Tom, as it still seemed now, that Juniper was just like that flower. An object of unfathomable perfection in a world that was breaking apart. It wasn't only the way she looked, and it wasn't only the things she said. It was something else, an intangible essence, a confidence, a strength, as if she were connected somehow to the mechanism that drove the world. She was the breeze on a summer's day, the first drops of rain when the earth was parched, light from the evening star.”

Inner StrengthHoneysuckleJuniper And TomJuniper Blythe
Book:The Distant Hours
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“We came to a clearing and stopped. Dark green vines with oblong leaves and purple flowers in pairs grew everywhere- under our feet, around tree trunks and small shrubs, in a circle at least thirty feet wide. Fat green-eyed insects buzzed lazily around the blossoms. A heavy, luscious fragrance filled the air. "Honeysuckle!" I plucked a couple of flowers and took a moment to appreciate the dark purple petals that faded to lavender and then white at their base. I brought one to my nose and sniffed. My cousins had a vine like this at their house in India. But these blossoms were gargantuan, each one the size of my palm. I pinched off the green cap that held the petals together, pulled on the little string that was exposed, and tasted the small glob of nectar that glistened at the end. My mouth burst with sweetness.”

FlowersSweetnessHoneysuckle
Book:Midsummer's Mayhem
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“After some experimentation, we put hot water in a measuring cup and dissolved the honeysuckle nectar by swirling the stems around. When we were done with all the flowers, I tasted the golden liquid; it was sweet and fragrant. There wasn't much of the solution, though- we'd have to make a very small batch if we wanted the honeysuckle to be noticeable. We measured out the dry ingredients and Vik whisked in a pinch of ground cloves while I creamed the butter with the sugar, and then added honey. We poured in the honeysuckle nectar and combined everything. Vik and I tasted the dough: it was sweet and spicy, the flavors in perfect harmony.”

IngredientsCookiesBakingFlavor CombosHoneysuckle
Book:Midsummer's Mayhem
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“Her dad never brought Phil and Lara back to the graveyard. He had buried some of her mother's things beneath a honeysuckle in the garden. A worn leather glove, a birthday card that she had written for each of them. The last photograph of the four of them together. There was a wisdom to what he had done; Lara saw it now. As the memory of her mother faded, the honeysuckle grew stronger. When Lara stood beneath it in summer, when it was in full bloom, her mother's sweetness seemed to live on in the scent of the flowers.”

MeaningfulSweetnessHoneysuckleDearly Departed
Book:The Flower Arrangement
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