A conversation with
Rachel Linden Tell us about The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie. ©
It’s the story of pie maker Lolly Blanchard who M a ll gives up everything—including an engagement ring or y Ma c D a l d on and her dream career in England—to keep her family and their struggling Seattle diner afloat after her mother’s sudden death. Ten years after she sacrifices everything, Lolly is given a surprise gift that allows her to redo her three biggest regrets and perhaps reclaim the lost life she still longs for and the love she can’t forget. It’s a story about what-ifs, second chances, and making lemonade out of the lemons life hands us.
The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie is about a young baker, Lolly, who is granted a magical second chance to live the life she didn’t choose by taking three different lemon drops. What inspired this idea? I got the idea for this book while sitting on an airplane from Nashville to Seattle, and I scribbled the sentence “What if you could redo your three biggest regrets?” on a Delta Air Lines beverage napkin. That question was just so enticing, so intriguing, that I wanted to explore it through this story! I was particularly drawn to exploring the what-ifs in life. What if we really could redo our biggest regrets? What would life look like now if we had made a different choice in our past? And I wanted to explore the reality that every choice we make in life is messy and complex,
that nothing is perfect, and that we really cannot go back and rewrite our pasts. We can only look forward and do the best with what we have today.
Why lemon drops? Lemons in the story symbolize clarity, happiness, and hope. I wanted to use something small and sweet and normal like a lemon drop to be a catalyst for turning Lolly’s life upside down and then right side up again. I wanted the object, the lemon drops, to be regular and unremarkable, but the results when Lolly takes each one to be full of magic and surprises. Also there’s probably an element of nostalgia in there for me as well because my grandma kept a glass jar full of lemon drops in her pantry all the years I was growing up. I still remember the gritty texture of that sugar coating rasping against my tongue.
Your last novel, The Enlightenment of Bees, also featured a baker as the protagonist. What inspired you to revisit that occupation in this novel?
“Lemons in the story symbolize clarity, happiness and hope.”
My last protagonist, Mia, is a baker by training and baking is her passion in life. For Lolly it’s different. She bakes her mom’s famous recipe lemon meringue pies because she wants to help her family’s diner stay afloat, but she’s not passionate about baking. Her heart lies in another direction entirely. Her story is about her leaving behind other people’s expectations of her and forging her own path, following her bliss. I’m drawn to writing about food, first because I love to cook, but also because so many connections and conversations happen over food.
It’s a universal way to bring people together, and I think some of life’s most honest and important events happen around the table or in the kitchen. My stories just reflect that reality, hopefully in a yummy and enjoyable way!
In The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie, Lolly visits many different locations such as England, Hawaii, Miami, and Seattle. Why did you choose these places? I love to travel and love to read stories that transport me to beautiful locations. I like to write about places I’ve been, and the locations I chose just seemed to fit the moments in the story where they occur. Also I wrote this book in 2020 when no one was going anywhere, so it felt like a little vacation in my mind to revisit England and Hawaii and Florida while I sat under lockdown in drizzly, gray Seattle.
How has your background as an international aid worker impacted this novel? In all of my stories I’m really conscious of wanting to promote issues or causes I’m passionate about, about shining a light on the things I value. In my novels I’ve touched on women’s rights, the refugee crisis in Europe, infertility and miscarriage, and human trafficking among others. For this story I wanted to highlight an environmentally friendly theme. I’m passionate about being kind to the Earth and wanted to share a positive message about making choices so that the things we’re passionate about in life also benefit the planet. In the story Lolly is eco-conscious, and the choices she makes reflect her care for the Earth. I think my years doing international aid work highlighted to me that true change starts with each of us. I believe we all have a responsibility to align our values and our actions to help bring about the change we believe in and want to see. There’s that old adage telling us to “Be the change you want to see,” and I think that it’s true. So I want the words I write to help bring about the change I want to see in the world. In this case it’s reminding us that we can pursue what we love while also caring for our Earth.
Without giving anything away, what was one of your favorite scenes to write? I’m a HUGE sucker for a good love story and I have to admit that I adored crafting Lolly and Rory’s star-crossed love story. I loved writing the arc of their relationship (both friendship and then romance) and seeing where it went and where they ended up. I particularly enjoyed getting to revisit Oxford, England, where I studied abroad in college. Getting to place a pivotal scene with Lolly and Rory at the iconic Turf Tavern in Oxford was just a delightful blast from the past.
“I identified with Lolly’s struggle to be responsible but also find her own way in life.”
What character in The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie do you relate to most? I love all the characters like they’re my children. I particularly love Aunt Gert who is based on my real-life Aunt Kay. But my favorite character is Lolly. I just really wanted to see her happy and thriving in her life. She’s a kind, responsible person who sacrificed so much for her family, and I identified with her desire to also chart her own course while still caring for her family. As a mom of young children and someone who has helped to care for relatives in ill health, I identified with Lolly’s struggle to be responsible but also find her own way in life. It was a joy to help Lolly learn to follow her bliss.
What do you hope readers will take away from reading The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie? I wrote this story in the midst of the Covid pandemic lockdown, and because of this, I think Lolly’s story can speak to readers in a universal way. I feel that her journey is very relatable to all of us who have lived
through the pandemic the past few years. Like Lolly, we’ve all found ourselves living in a reality we didn’t want or choose. We’ve had to make sacrifices and we’ve all suffered loss in some way or another. And like Lolly we’re figuring out what life looks like in this new normal. We’re asking the questions and exploring how we can take this new life we didn’t expect and make it satisfying and fulfilling again. I hope that readers take away a renewed sense of hope and optimism when they read Lolly’s story, that it gives them extra courage to take the reality of today and make it the best it can be.
What inspired you to write about the importance of following your bliss? Again, writing this during the lockdown really influenced how I approached Lolly’s story. I wanted to talk about how even in the midst of dark days, we must seek out and follow any sparks of light we can see. Aunt Gert tells Lolly to follow her bliss by doing three things: be honest, pay attention, and seek joy. I think that is a mantra for so many of us right now. To be honest about what life has been like the past few years. To pay attention to how we feel, what we want, and the reality of the world right now, and then to seek joy in the midst of it all. I want readers to be encouraged to follow their own bliss by doing what Lolly learns to do: be honest, pay attention, seek joy. Following your bliss isn’t just trying to pursue happiness. It’s deeper than that. It’s about gratitude, honesty, and really trying to move in a direction that allows each of us to live fully and well as the unique person we were meant to be. Helping my story characters, and hopefully readers, follow their bliss, that’s a true joy for me.
Are there any particular themes in The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie that you feel personally connected to [regret, loss, grief, love lost, family duty, etc.]? All of the above? Yes, in particular I feel connected to the question of “what if?” When hard things happen it’s easy to get stuck in the what-ifs. What if there
hadn’t been that life-altering medical diagnosis? What if we hadn’t had a global pandemic? What if we hadn’t suffered that miscarriage, breakup, job loss, family crisis, divorce? What if we’d been able to continue life as normal? But like Lolly I have to come to accept that the life I might have wished for isn’t the life I have now, or any of us have now, and therefore I have to learn what it means to find joy and satisfaction today, in this real life right now, and to seek to follow my bliss in the reality of the present.
You incorporated aspects of your great aunt into The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie. Tell us more about that. The character of Aunt Gert is VERY strongly based on my real-life aunt, Dr. Kathryn Smith. She was an amazingly strong, resilient woman who overcame poverty and significant difficulty in rural Appalachia to get her doctorate in New York City. She worked with the UN and lived such an amazingly adventurous life of academics and travel, all on her own terms. She is an inspiration, a reminder that our circumstances do not have to define us, and that through grit and hard work, we can pursue our dreams and make a different life for ourselves. Although she didn’t give me magic lemon drops, she still opened up the world in a very special way for me and I’m so grateful to her for that.
Discussion Questions 1.
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At the beginning of the story Lolly feels stuck in her life. She is caught between duty to her family and the diner and her own dreams and desires. Have you ever felt stuck because you were caught between two conflicting priorities? What did you do?
How were each of Lolly’s three lemon drop days important to her? What did she take away from each day? How did those takeaways impact her choices later on in the story?
2. What do you think of Lolly’s life goals list? Ultimately, do you think Lolly accomplished any of her goals? Why or why not?
3. What role does Aunt Gert play in the story? How does she help Lolly move forward in her life?
5. Do you agree with Aunt Gert’s life advice to “follow your bliss”? Why or why not?
6. How does Lolly follow her bliss in the story? How does she learn to be honest, pay attention, and seek joy? How does that influence the ending of her story?
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In what ways does Lolly exhibit generosity in the later part of the story while still pursuing her own dreams? Do you think it’s possible to do both? How?
In what ways does Lolly see sparks of light and glimmers of hope in her darkest times of loss? How do those sparks ultimately lead her toward her bliss?
8. Lolly is surrounded by strong women—her mother, Aunt Gert, Daphne, and Eve. How do they help guide her life choices? What strong women have most influenced you and how did they impact your life?
9. How does Lolly’s enduring love for Rory shape her life? How do you feel about the path their relationship takes and how their story ends?
11. What important lessons do you think Lolly learns by the end of the story? Do those lessons resonate with you? Why or why not?
12. If you had three lemon drops to use, what would you choose to redo or revisit in your past?