One of the things I realized, quickly after starting working with the fine, fine folks at M. Judson for Books Over Drinks was that I enjoyed the challenge of working with books by authors that I didn’t know. It’d be one thing to create a cocktail for a book by an author I’ve read everything from (in case you want a drink, TC Boyle, you just say the word), but getting to experience new books by different voices is surprisingly fun. For this round, I was tasked with coming up with a drink for Kimberly Brock’s The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare. From the author’s website:
The fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl.
What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured Commonplace Book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped.
In the waning days of World War Two, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.
In this sweeping tale from award-winning author Kimberly Brock, the answers to a real-life mystery may be found in the pages of a story that was always waiting to be written.
The inspiration for this drink came from the beautiful cover, specifically the peacock feathers. To capture their essence, I used butterfly pea flower tea, which changes color when it interacts with acid. (You can read the science behind it at Bon Appétit.) From there, I added some rum and a few other ingredients, and voila!
The Peacock’s Feather
- 1.5 oz Flor de Caña 4 Extra Seco rum
- 3 oz butterfly pea flower tea
- 75 oz simple syrup
- .5 oz lemon juice
- .5 oz lime juice
Method: Add rum, tea, and simple syrup to a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a glass with ice. Top with lemon and lime juice and stir to see the color change.