Despite its potential for disaster, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s also a great occasion to see how well your characters navigate the unrealistic expectations that show up like unwanted guests during the holidays in your fiction. Mer Cavallo, my protagonist in Beached, decides Thanksgiving will be the perfect occasion to host her first ever dinner party as she tries to make a home for herself in Key Largo. It does not unfold as intended.
Over the years, I’ve personally honed a standard menu: roast turkey with a caramelized-onion gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, a second wildcard vegetable, homemade cranberry sauce, assorted relishes, and rolls. For dessert I double up and make a killer dried cranberry and apple pie along with my grandmother’s pecan pie.
Contrast that with the first time I contributed something more than a can of cranberries or the floral centerpiece to a Thanksgiving meal. I volunteered to cook the turkey. I mean, I’d never cooked one before, but seriously, how hard could it be?
Um, yeah. Bet you can see where this is going.
Let me assure you, there is a reason Butterball has a turkey hotline. It was a number I should have put on speed dial. For the uninitiated, no matter how delicious a turkey smells, or how perfectly bronzed the skin, neither is truly an indication of whether the bird is actually cooked. But I proudly carried the turkey to the table. My brother-in-law picked up the carving knife. And I learned a lesson about the value of a good meat thermometer.
Thanksgiving for Dummies
I’ll admit, I once bought into the hype surrounding the holiday even while recognizing that the glossy photo of the perfect table, set with expensive china showcasing a holiday bird that could only have originated from Martha Stewart’s own oven was an unattainable ideal. The woman holding the carving knife as if she actually intended to use it on the turkey instead of her family gave it away.
Thanksgiving isn’t about perfection. It never was. But it’s that imperfection that makes the celebration interesting.
It’s no secret that an author’s humiliations are often fodder for their characters’ challenges, and more than one of my escapades have ended up complicating the holidays in my fiction. Since the Year-of-the-Great-Turkey Debacle, I’ve discovered the key to tackling a meal of any magnitude is preparation and a lot of help. But that doesn’t mean Mer learned the same lesson in Beached. In fact, no matter how intelligent the hostess, this is not a lesson that can be taught. It must be experienced.
Chapter Six
Mer considered herself a reasonably intelligent woman, but smart wasn’t the word used to describe a person who went to the grocery store the night before Thanksgiving.
