Jenna Bush Hager has selected Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake as the latest pick for her Today show book club.
Hager made the announcement Tuesday on the morning show, saying, “It is a mystery, but it’s also about love. I love it. It spans decades, but also countries.”
Wilkerson’s debut novel, published Tuesday by Ballantine, tells the story of two siblings whose mother dies and leaves them a traditional Caribbean fruitcake and a voice recording that contains unexpected revelations about her life. A reviewer for Kirkus wrote, “There is plenty to savor in this ambitious and accomplished debut.”
In an interview with BookPage, Wilkerson recently said that she has her mother’s recipe for black cake but chose not to include it in the novel because she didn’t want the book to be seen as food-centric.
“It’s about the idea that there’s the story you tell about your life, about your family history, about your culture,” she said. “And then there are the stories that are not told, or concealed, or not fully revealed. The cake symbolizes the history of this family, in which the children, who are now grown, really don’t know the half of what their parents went through.”
“There is something almost mysterious about [the novel],” Hager said. “I was on the edge of my seat. I wanted to know what was going to happen and who these characters were.”
Wilkerson reacted to her book’s selection on Instagram, writing, “Truly thrilled that Jenna Bush Hager of the Today Show has chosen BLACK CAKE as the @readwithjenna pick for February. Thank you for reading Black Cake, Jenna!”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
