Bonnie Lee Black

For Bonnie Lee Black, writing and cooking have always been analogous. Both involve the thoughtful and loving preparation of something good for another's consumption. This cookbook is a compilation of some of the author's favorite, tried-and-true sweet tart recipes, along with related stories, drawn from her twenty-year culinary career. Her message to readers is simple: "I hope that Sweet Tarts will inspire you to make one or two--or more---of these recipes from time to time, especially on special occasions and enjoy them with your own sweethearts."

The lost history of Bonnie Lee Black's Scottish great-grandmother, Helen, has haunted the author for years. Why, as young newlyweds, did Helen and William Black leave their hometown, Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland, and immigrate to the "dark continent" of Africa in 1882? Black's deep spiritual connection to her ancestor has inspired her to weave a tale that is part fantasy and part history. Helen and Will died just three years after settling in Natal, South Africa, just months after the birth of their first child, Black's grandfather, John. There is no record of their demise; no record of how their baby son ended up in an orphanage in Edinburgh, nor of how the 14-year-old boy stowed away on a ship to New York. Black lived in Africa for many years herself and writes with a sure sense of place and history, interwoven with the fantasy of Helen, her short life, and her imagined close friendship with Kirriemuir's most famous son, J. M. Barrie, author of "Peter Pan."