Guest post written by The Secret War of Julia Child author Diana R. Chambers
Diana R. Chambers was born with a book in one hand and a passport in the other. She studied Asian art history at university, worked at a Paris translation agency, and began an export business in India. Then somehow she found herself in Hollywood writing scripts—until her characters demanded their own novels. Her latest, published by Sourcebooks Landmark, is The Secret War of Julia Child, a People magazine Best Book of Fall 2024. Diana lives in Northern California and Aix-en-Provence, France, with her husband, daughter, and Marco Polo the cat. She is still looking for the perfect suitcase.
About The Secret War of Julia Child: Before she mastered the art of French cooking in midlife, Julia Child found herself working in the secrets trade in Asia during World War II, a journey that will delight both historical fiction fans and lovers of America’s most beloved chef, revealing how the war made her into the icon we know now.
Julia Child is known for bringing French food to the world. But first the world had to come to her! My new novel, THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD, takes us inside her formative years with America’s first espionage agency—the Office of Strategic Services—on the harrowing Asian front lines of World War Two.
In April 1944, Julia McWilliams, the thirty-one-year-old head of OSS secret files, docks in Bombay, India, along with some colleagues and two-thousand GIs bound for the expanding China-Burma-India (CBI) theater of war.
With her first Indian meal, Julia’s taste buds come alive. The smell of basmati rice arouses her. She awakens to these new experiences: stirring flavor and smell, dazzling color and the pulsing sounds of life. The spices! And the outdoor markets! The vibrant display of fresh produce! A meat and potatoes California girl, she is reborn.
Julia is sent to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), an island off India’s southeast coast. In the hills above Kandy, she organizes the secret files for the new OSS base, where she must work with the annoying chief mapmaker, Paul Child. Gradually and grudgingly, she begins to see his good side. To begin with, he is a serious foodie—and Julia has a good appetite.
Later, she is posted north to Kunming in southwest China, where Paul is mapping the remote region, their base under constant threat of enemy attack. At night, they find relief in the mouthwatering meals of local chefs. With her characteristic energy, Julia pursues further culinary explorations, which cement their affection for Chinese food. After the war, the State Department transfers Paul to Paris, where they revel in the glories of French cooking. Julia masters this secret art—and brings it to us all.
Here are four novels and a memoir that help place us in the world Julia encounters on the far shores of the Pacific.
Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam by Kim K. Fay offers both a feast for armchair gourmets and a colorful guide for travelers hungering for their next adventure. In this luscious memoir, author Fay is joined by her sister and best friend in Vietnam on a five-week journey from Hanoi to Saigon. Every encounter serves up an enticing morsel, from street cafés to vibrant outdoor food markets; from banana flower salads to clay pot fish; from the French cooking of hill town Dalat to bonding with the Julia Child of Saigon!
Man Booker Prize-winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North: A Novel, is by Richard Flanagan, an Australian author whose father had been a prisoner of war on Japan’s Death Railway in Siam and Burma. In the camps, the life of surgeon Dorrigo Evans is a daily struggle to save his fellow POWs. Under brutal conditions, he attempts to keep his humanity while atoning for his affair with his uncle’s young wife. The influence of this searing novel on my work cannot be overstated.
Each chapter of The Mistress of Spices, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, begins with the name of an Indian spice and its traditional meaning. “…Spices are my love,” the Mistress of Spices tells us on the first page. “…Their heat runs in my blood. From amchur to zafran…” She is Tilo, short for Tilottama, “the sun-burnished sesame seed, spice of nourishment.” Although a deeply pragmatic person, Julia Child would be drawn to this poetic novel of magic realism for the sense memories it evokes of her war years in India, Ceylon, and China. And the local food that changed her life.
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, is the first of an epic trilogy that takes us from the poppy fields of the Ganges to the Opium Wars of China. Following the abolition of the slave trade, an old schooner, the Ibis, sails from Baltimore to Calcutta, with the intention of shifting into a new trade—the export of opium. Fate throws together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners as they sail the high seas in search of fortune or freedom or adventure—or simply enough food to survive. In this award-winning saga, the band of “ship-brothers” invites us to taste the foods of all nations.
Last but not least, the contemporary and irresistible book, Butter, A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton. “There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.” The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case, is inspired by a true story. Possibly the best descriptions of taste and the experience of eating I’ve ever read—and one Julia might have surely relished.
