Lisa Alber--The Dad Theme, in Life and My Novels

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Welcome back, Lisa Alber! I love that JUNGLE RED has a special place in your writing history, and we are always thrilled to have you!

But I do want to know how time--and books!--go by so fast... Has it really been four years?

LISA ALBER: Thanks for inviting me today, Debs! A funny thing happened on the way to writing this blog post. I decided to refresh my memory about my previous guest posts here on Jungle Reds and came upon a post that I’d forgotten I’d written. My very first guest post anywhere, as a matter of fact, back in 2013. It’s a post about Coffee Toffee Pie (+recipe!) and my deceased dad—a kind of loaded topic. Not the pie, which was the reason Lucy asked me to post in the first place (everyone loves pie, am I right or am I wrong?), but the dad bits.

Fast forward four years, and I can’t help but think about how father-daughter (and some son) relationships figure big in my novels. It’s a theme I keep mining, keep wanting to explore.

In Path Into Darkness, my third novel set in Ireland, one of my two main series characters, DS Danny Ahern, balances being a single father, managing his comatose wife’s medical ups-and-downs, and investigating the murder of one of his pub mates, Elder Joe. Meanwhile, my other protagonist, Californian Merrit, is still trying to maneuver around her relationship with her father, Liam, at the same time she gets pulled into Danny’s investigation.

Danny and Merrit find themselves circling ever closer to the darkness at the heart of the ultimate father-daughter relationship: mentally fragile Nathan Tate and beautiful, buoyant Zoe. This relationship is a doozy! And it could be that Nathan is somehow implicated in Elder Joe’s murder, or it could be that something else is going on altogether. (I hope you’re intrigued!)

So, fathers and their children—the theme that keeps on giving!

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot lately because I visited with his sisters in Chicago at the beginning of the month. I hadn’t seen them in decades. At one point, Aunt Bernie was preparing appetizers while I drank wine (what’s new?), and I had this moment of dislocation. Her mannerisms, her gestures, her expressions, even the way her mouth hung open when she wasn’t talking, was my dad all over again. For a few moments there, Dad was alive again. 

When I expressed my verklempted-ness, Aunt Bernie treated me to a Princess Di glance and a little smile (so like dad!), and said, “We did come out of the same gene pool, after all.”

And that was so dad too—using logic to veer away from emotion. I just had to laugh, but I didn’t let her Alber-ness daunt me. I was feeling emotional, and I was going to express it!

“I’m getting teary,” I said. “It’s like seeing dad again.”

“Well, that’s OK then,” she said, which makes me smile even now. So effusive, we Albers!

It might be a truism that our themes pick us rather than the other way around. If that’s so, I wonder when I’m going to start delving into mother-child dynamics?

DEBS: Well, if you do, Lisa, I can't wait to read the result. Here's what the reviewers have to say about PATH INTO DARKNESS:

“Alber’s third series outing is an atmospheric story of Ireland, filled with myth and darkness. The characters are as hard and mysterious as the land itself. Fans of Erin Hart’s dark Irish crime novels should welcome this series.” —Library Journal (starred review)

"A dark, compelling mystery with numerous plot twists and well-drawn characters interwoven with an involving portrait of life in a small insular Irish village." —Booklist

"Heartwrenching ... engaging ... A haunting tale rife with gruesome murders and secrets, Path into Darkness shines." —Foreword Reviews

“Lisa Alber’s new mystery is like a BBC drama—an Irish small town with far too many secrets. Every character's motivations seem utterly different after one more turn of the screw. And there is always one more turn of the screw.”
—Willamette Week

I can echo all that and add that I LOVED PATH INTO DARKNESS and so did my mystery fan daughter.

Lisa Alber’s debut novel, Kilmoon, was nominated for the Rosebud Award of Best First Novel. Kirkus calls her second novel, Whispers in the Mist, a “worthy successor to Kilmoon in tone, mood, complexity, and keen insight into human failures and triumphs.” She balances writing her next novel with gardening, dog-walking, and goofing off. She lives in Portland, OR. You can find Lisa online at lisaalber.com, Facebook and Twitter.

Lisa will be dropping in to chat, and will give away a copy of PATH INTO DARKNESS AND an Irish trinket to a lucky commenter.

READERS, do you enjoy books that explore complicated family relationships?

Lisa Alber on Turning Points and Pie

LUCY BURDETTE: We all loved Lori Roy's post earlier this week--so many good stories about keepsakes. When I read Lisa Alber's response about memorabilia from her father's restaurants, and about his coffee toffee pie, I asked if she would join us to talk more and share that fabulous-sounding recipe. And then I discovered her first book comes out next year! What fun! Welcome Lisa!

LISA ALBER: Thanks for inviting me here today, Lucy! Lori’s post struck a nostalgic cord with me, that’s for sure.

Sadly, a crucial turning point in my relationship with my dad occurred after his death. My sisters and I had discovered a stash of menus, articles, and fliers from Dad’s restaurateur days. He’d saved three copies of everything, one set for each daughter. Frankly, I was astonished. Dad saved this for us?

Dad was a distant man, and I barely saw him growing up. We weren’t close. Fingering a menu that listed Dad’s famous coffee toffee pie for 60¢, I realized that not only had Dad been sentimental, he’d been thinking about us all along. Talk about a revelation. I caught a glimmer of him, perhaps for the first time, and I was heartbroken. What do you do with a turning point when it’s too late to go back?

Eventually, I wrote my upcoming  novel, Kilmoon, which centers around a woman who doesn’t know her father. I also kept the one keepsake—excluding papers—that my dad had saved from the restaurants: a battered springform baking pan. My mom never understood why he’d kept it, but I’d experienced the glimmer. I understood. Menu items came and went, but Dad always served coffee toffee pie. That dented pan symbolized an era and also Dad’s love in the only way he could easily express it. I still miss coffee toffee pie.

Have you experienced an epiphany about someone when it was too late to go back?

And, for you, dear Jungle Reddians, a recipe. Yum!

Joe Alber’s Coffee Toffee Pie

Makes two pies

Crust:

1 lb. box of pie crust mix
1/2 cup Ghiradelli powdered unsweetened chocolate (or cocoa)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/4 cups crushed walnuts (not graham crackers as I’d mentioned in Lori’s post)
4 Tbsp. crushed Heath toffee bar bits
1 Tbsp. water as needed
 
Combine pie crust mix, powdered chocolate, brown sugar, walnuts, and toffee in a mixing bowl. Beat until crumbly, being sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Press dough firmly into two well-greased springform pans, keeping thickness of bottom to ¼ inch and heights of sides to about one inch. Add water to mixture and blend as needed if mixture is too crumbly. Also, moisten fingers with cold water as pressing dough into place to ease handling.

Bake at 325 degrees for 20 minutes. Cool for 20 minutes, and then place in the freezer.

Filling:

3/4 lb. butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
2 Tbsp. instant coffee
3 one-ounce squares of semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled
6 eggs, room temperature

Cream butter. Add sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy. Stir in chocolate and instant coffee. Add eggs one at a time beating thoroughly after adding each egg. Pour into cooled shells.

Whipped cream topping:

1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp. instant coffee
1 Tbsp. powdered sugar

Whip cream with coffee and sugar. Spread over whole pie. Chill at least two hours before serving.


Lisa Alber’s debut novel, KILMOON, a mystery set in Ireland, arrives March 2014. Based on Kilmoon, Lisa received an Elizabeth George Foundation writing grant. You can find Lisa online at www.lisaalber.com and lisaalber.wordpress.com.