I am a happy member of my local libary’s adult book club (which my wife runs). This month, we read M.F.K. Fisher’s 1942 book How to Cook a Wolf. I thought I’d never heard of the book, but it turns out that in 2020 Backlisted did a timely episode all about it, and my podcast app shows that I listened. It was 2020, so I’m giving myself a pass.

The Backlisted episode is not the only reason that 2020 comes to mind as I think about this book. How to Cook a Wolf was written in response to America’s entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Resources were scarce and there was no telling when — or how — things would change. The wolf in the title carries a number of meanings, but for me it most vividly represents hunger, fear, uncertainty — the growl of anxiety that threatens at the door. How does one confront that wolf? Can it be tamed, even transformed into a meal worth savoring?

I went in knowing little about the book. After a quick glance at the table of contents — featuring curious chapter titles like “How to Distribute Your Virtue,” “How to Boil Water,” “How to Be Cheerful Through Starving” — I simply started reading. And I loved it. Fisher’s determination to cook a good meal — and have what that represents — even in times of uncertainty and scarcity is laudable and deeply human. She approaches her task with wit and verve, reinforcing one of her central ideas: it’s not just okay to find joy in difficult times — it’s essential.

I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert the reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war’s fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever increasing enjoyment. And with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves. Then Fate, even tangled as it is with cold wars as well as hot, cannot harm us.

As much as I loved the historical insight — made even more poignant as I imagined my grandparents living through this time — it was Fisher’s wry touch that made the book more than a snapshot of the past. We get her unique voice in two ways. About a decade after its original publication, after the war had ended and times were better, Fisher revisited her book, adding notes without altering her original words. I was delighted to see her lightly annotating her own work, offering more insights gained with time, gently teasing her younger self, and reflecting on the ever-changing nature of life.