girl, you might amount to something after all. And rememberâwho knows how the future can turn on a single day in our lives. Now step on it. I have to get home and pee!â
Â
A few days later I returned to the patisserie in Little Quebec, looking for the tall laughing girl with raven hair and morning-glory eyes. But to my great disappointment the bakery was closed. The property had been sold again, the Letourneaus had moved, and I could find no one in the neighborhood who could tell me anything at all about the bakerâs assistant. I didnât even know her name.
What was I left with from my afternoon with Louvia DeBanville, in search of a recipe that probably never existed? A good day with a friend. Some questions about my vocation. Mysteries. And stories. Stories of Louvia, young and beautiful, gliding across the hardwood floor of the pavilion with the colored lanterns shimmering to the trombone runs of the big bands. Of two elderly sisters, feeding the families of the striking mill workers. Of the scent of fresh-baked bread. And of Louviaâs belief that our fortunes often turn on a single event in ways I could not have begun to imagine.
3
Enemies
Only in the Kingdom, Commoners said of the feud between the Lacourses and the Gambinis. Only in this forgotten enclave of the Appalachian Mountain chain stretching all the way north to Vermont from Georgia and Tennessee could such an anachronism as a full-blown multigenerational family feud be sustained and tolerated and, yes, even nurtured, well into the middle of the twentieth century.
âFather George, âA Short Historyâ
Â
F OR AS LONG as anyone could remember, the Lacourses and the Gambinis had hated each other with an implacable hostility, though they were otherwise hard-working, respected members of the community, with successful businesses and large families of bright children.
Emile Lacourse owned a productive lumbering operation, leasing tracts of timberland that he logged with the most modern methods and equipment, but carefully and responsibly, never scalping the mountainsides of every last stick of wood but instead cutting selectively and staying away from the banks of brooks and rivers. On the higher elevations he still used horses, as his Québécois ancestors had, to preserve the steep and delicate terrain from the deep ruts of gasoline-powered skidders. For all his business acumen, Emile was a conservationist before his time.
Pietro Gambiniâs Italian ancestors were stonecutters. They had come from Milano to work the pink granite on the ridge above the Kinneson family farm, where the lovely sunset-colored building stones used for the Academy, St. Maryâs, the courthouse, the railroad station, the big houses on Anderson Hill, and the monuments in the village cemetery had been quarried. Over the decades, as the granite pit had deepened, icy water from springs deep in the heart of the ridge made working the mine beyond a certain depth impracticable. The Gambinis had then turned to dairy farming and cheesemaking. Their cheese factory on the edge of the village manufactured a smooth and tangy cheddar that won awards at dairy festivals as far away as Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Apart from the feud, it was astonishing how much alike the families were. Both the Lacourses and the Gambinis maintained close ties with relatives in their homelands. Both families kept up ancestral traditions. The Gambinis concocted flavorful wines from wild blue grapes, blackberries, chokecherries, even dandelion blossoms. The Lacourses celebrated New Yearâs Day even more enthusiastically than Christmas, carting maple sugar pies and glazed cakes in the shape of logs to all their neighbors except, pointedly, the Gambinis. Both families owned expensive cars. When Emile Lacourse bought a new Pontiac, Pietro Gambini rushed to the same Burlington dealership to purchase a Super 88 Oldsmobile just off the assembly line. The following spring Emile
Â
A few days later I returned to the patisserie in Little Quebec, looking for the tall laughing girl with raven hair and morning-glory eyes. But to my great disappointment the bakery was closed. The property had been sold again, the Letourneaus had moved, and I could find no one in the neighborhood who could tell me anything at all about the bakerâs assistant. I didnât even know her name.
What was I left with from my afternoon with Louvia DeBanville, in search of a recipe that probably never existed? A good day with a friend. Some questions about my vocation. Mysteries. And stories. Stories of Louvia, young and beautiful, gliding across the hardwood floor of the pavilion with the colored lanterns shimmering to the trombone runs of the big bands. Of two elderly sisters, feeding the families of the striking mill workers. Of the scent of fresh-baked bread. And of Louviaâs belief that our fortunes often turn on a single event in ways I could not have begun to imagine.
3
Enemies
Only in the Kingdom, Commoners said of the feud between the Lacourses and the Gambinis. Only in this forgotten enclave of the Appalachian Mountain chain stretching all the way north to Vermont from Georgia and Tennessee could such an anachronism as a full-blown multigenerational family feud be sustained and tolerated and, yes, even nurtured, well into the middle of the twentieth century.
âFather George, âA Short Historyâ
Â
F OR AS LONG as anyone could remember, the Lacourses and the Gambinis had hated each other with an implacable hostility, though they were otherwise hard-working, respected members of the community, with successful businesses and large families of bright children.
Emile Lacourse owned a productive lumbering operation, leasing tracts of timberland that he logged with the most modern methods and equipment, but carefully and responsibly, never scalping the mountainsides of every last stick of wood but instead cutting selectively and staying away from the banks of brooks and rivers. On the higher elevations he still used horses, as his Québécois ancestors had, to preserve the steep and delicate terrain from the deep ruts of gasoline-powered skidders. For all his business acumen, Emile was a conservationist before his time.
Pietro Gambiniâs Italian ancestors were stonecutters. They had come from Milano to work the pink granite on the ridge above the Kinneson family farm, where the lovely sunset-colored building stones used for the Academy, St. Maryâs, the courthouse, the railroad station, the big houses on Anderson Hill, and the monuments in the village cemetery had been quarried. Over the decades, as the granite pit had deepened, icy water from springs deep in the heart of the ridge made working the mine beyond a certain depth impracticable. The Gambinis had then turned to dairy farming and cheesemaking. Their cheese factory on the edge of the village manufactured a smooth and tangy cheddar that won awards at dairy festivals as far away as Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Apart from the feud, it was astonishing how much alike the families were. Both the Lacourses and the Gambinis maintained close ties with relatives in their homelands. Both families kept up ancestral traditions. The Gambinis concocted flavorful wines from wild blue grapes, blackberries, chokecherries, even dandelion blossoms. The Lacourses celebrated New Yearâs Day even more enthusiastically than Christmas, carting maple sugar pies and glazed cakes in the shape of logs to all their neighbors except, pointedly, the Gambinis. Both families owned expensive cars. When Emile Lacourse bought a new Pontiac, Pietro Gambini rushed to the same Burlington dealership to purchase a Super 88 Oldsmobile just off the assembly line. The following spring Emile
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