The Map of True Places and a trip to Salem

For Brunonia Barry's The Map of True Places I decided to do something different.  As you may have noticed, this is not a picture of some yummy dish, but instead a colonial looking house.  It is the House of Seven Gables of Nathanial Hawthorne fame and it is in Salem, Massachusetts.  Although every once in a while I do read a book about the Boston area (where I live) until this week's book, which is set in Salem, Massachusetts, I have not really been inspired to get in the car and walk in the footsteps of the characters of the book.  But Salem is a such central character in The Map of True Places I felt compelled to grab a friend and head to Salem last weekend.  The Map of True Places is about a 30 something woman who is a psychiatrist in Boston that is forced to move back home to Salem to take care of her ill father and confront the issues of her past.  Her name is Zee, short for Hepzibah, who was a central character in Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables.  Zee's father Finch is a Hawthorne scholar and she grew up across the street from The House of Seven Gables (pictured above) which is where Hawthorne grew up and set one of his novels. So this week's post will feature some photos of Salem as well as review of a well known Salem restaurant, Finz, which also was featured in the book.

What I loved about the The Map of True Places is that it was equally about Zee and her struggle to come to terms with her past and about the literary history of Salem.  As soon as I finished the book I went to a used book store and bought Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables and Melville's Moby Dick - because The Map of True Places referenced them a lot AND made me really want to re-read them. I think I read both of these books in school, but I frankly don't remember much about them.  And while Salem is certainly a star of this book, Barry also really creates a compelling page turner, that is both emotionally charged and suspenseful.  The book begins by introducing us to Zee and her seemingly perfect life in Boston.  She works as a psychoanalyst in the practice of the famous Dr. Mattei, who is also her mentor.  Zee is engaged to a fairly bland guy, Michael, who loves fancy wines and likes everything just so.  Zee seems to just be going along with things in her life - you don't get the sense that she is passionate about her job or her engagement.  The one thing she does seem to care about is trying to help one of her patients, Lily, who is a troubled wealthy middle aged woman who seems on a path of self destruction.   Despite Zee's efforts to help her, Lily commits suicide and this understandably sets Zee into a bit of a tailspin.   Lily's suicide is especially difficult for Zee because her own mother had the same bipolar disorder as Lily and committed suicide when Zee was a child.  Zee was raised by her flighty academic father, who soon after her mother's death had his secret boyfriend Melville move into the house.   Zee became a wild child and seems a bit estranged from her father as an adult - she clearly never really forgave him or herself for what happened to her mother.  Zee decides to go to Lily's funeral, which Dr. Mattei warns her not to, and has a disturbing run in with the volatile man that Lily was having an affair with, Adam.  Zee becomes convinced that Lily's death was not actually a suicide and her obsession with the Lily's death causes friction with both Dr. Mattei and her fiance.  Since Lily lived in a town right next to where Zee grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, Zee makes a trip to visit her father after the funeral.  Here she discovers that her father, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, is not well - he is having hallucinations, where he believes that he is actually Nathanial Hawthorne and has thrown out his partner Melville.  Zee plans to stay a couple of days to try to care for her father (she takes him to the doctor and it is discovered that his visions were a result of bad medications) but when it becomes clear how advanced his Parkinson's and Parkinson's related dementia has become, she decides to take a leave of absence and stay in Salem to care for him.  This decision is just as much about her father as it is a way for Zee to escape her life - to escape her engagement and her practice, which she is disillusioned with after the loss of Lily.  The parts of the book dealing with decline of Zee's father Finch and the transition that Zee must go through to the role of caretaker for her father are heartbreaking.  Barry captures the grief and complicated feelings that Zee experiences without melodrama and in a very real way.  Having had the unfortunate experience of caring for a parent with dementia, I found Barry's depiction very true to life and perhaps it is for this reason I found the book so affecting.  But what is great about the book is that this is just a part of what is going on so as a reader you do not feel weighed down by really sad subject matter.  There is also a romance for Zee in the form of a mysterious sailor named Hawk. Hawk adds another layer of random interesting subject matter here by teaching Zee about celestial navigation.  Through her romance with Hawk Zee seems to be living out the dreams of her mother, who believed that she was the reincarnation of a character in an old Salem legend.   As the novel progresses the issue of Lily's death again becomes a feature as Zee tries to discover whether she really committed suicide or was murdered and gets tangled up with Lily's violent ex-lover.  As I said - there is a lot going on here - through her stay in Salem Zee must work out her feelings about everyone in her family - her mother, her father Finch and her "step" father, Melville.  Lots of secrets about the past are slowly revealed one by one by the author and I was surprised by each of these reveals.  Barry uses the legends and history of Salem as another character in the book.  She uses Salem to create a rich and slightly spooky atmosphere and also as a way to tell the story - the lives Zee and her family echo to the lives of Hawthorne and the characters of his books.  This was an exciting and interesting read. 

Some Salem Pics
Below are some pics of Salem from my walk around. 
The House of Seven Gables: This is the house that inspired Nathanial Hawthorne's gothic novel, The House of Seven Gables.  I vaguely remember reading it in school.  It looks kinda gothic right?
The house belonged to Hawthorne's cousin and he was born in another house on the grounds.   The main character of the book is the owner of the house, Hepzibah Pyncheon.  This is the person Zee, in The Map of True Places was named after.  You can go on tours of the house, which I did as a kid. For this trip I just walked around the outside.  Zee's home in Salem is across the street from this house.

Here is the view of the foggy Salem Harbor from the House of Seven Gables.

A miniature ship on the grounds of The House of Seven Gables.  Although Salem is primarily known for its witch craft past, it was a major shipping center for the Colonies and there are lots of sights and museums in the town concerning this maritime past.  When I was a kid I think the town wanted to try to shift attention away from the witch stuff.  Today, Salem has fully embraced its association with witchcraft and there are witch shops, fortune tellers etc... everywhere in town and all the town signs have a little witch on them.  It's easy to see why the town embraces the witch stuff - it is a big money maker.  In fact on this trip I even indulged a bit in it, buying a love potion at a local witch shop.  I'll let you know if it works...

Ye Old Pepper Candy Company: Here are a couple of pics I took at Ye Old Pepper Candy Company, one of the oldest candy shop's in the U.S.  Zee buys some Gibralters and Black Jack's for her father, who loves them.  These are very old and kinda strange candies.  Gibraltars looked like opaque ice cubes and tasted like those mellow mints they used to give out after dinner at fancy restaurants.  The Black Jacks are molasses flavored stick candy.  Both were simple and good.

Where is the Friendship?  This is where the tall ship the Friendship usually docks.  The boat plays a big part in The Map of True Places, Hawk works on the boat and lives on another boat next store.  Unfortunately it must have sailed south for the winter. I thought this was a very atmospheric pic though, of the lonely storehouse and the gray sky.

Here is the Salem Custom House which was a big part of its maritime past.

Restaurant Review: Finz (6 Wharf Street, Pickering Wharf, Salem, Massachusetts) My friend Kerry and I had lunch at a famous Salem restaurant, Finz, that is featured in The Map of True Places. In the book, this is the restaurant, on Salem's Pickering Wharf, where Zee goes with Melville before she heads into Boston for her friend's wedding.  She runs into her uncle Mickey there on a date with her mother's best friend, Ann Chase, a witch who runs a Wicca shop in town.  Mickey, who owns many of the haunted houses etc... in town had been chasing Ann for many years so this date was a big deal.  Finz' specialty, obviously, is seafood.  It has both traditional new England dishes, like clam chowder, and more modern/fusion type of food, like the ubiquitous tuna tartar appetizer.  Kerry and I kept it pretty simple for our main dishes, but decided to take a risk on our appetizer.  We split an order of the "Wasabi-Stoli Oysters."  I love, love, love raw oysters just as they are without much adornment, so I should have known better than to order something that messed with the oyster in its natural state so much.  The Wasabi-Stoli Oysters topped with wasabi caviar (you may have had this in a sushi restaurant, it is mild whitefish caviar mixed with wasabi powder so they are like little bubbles of wasabi, you cannot really taste any fish) and Stoli "Raz" vodka.  Seriously, what was I thinking? The raspberry vodka really killed the oyster.  This is a dish for someone who is afraid of oysters, cause what they are getting is a shot of vodka.  However, once we poured the vodka off the oysters, they tasted good and I would order oysters with wasabi caviar again, I would just be very sparring with the caviar.  I am not sure of the provenance of these oysters, I assume they were from somewhere in Massachusetts.  They were medium sized and not very briny. Next up we both had some form of fish sandwiches, which came with coleslaw and french fries.  Let me first say that the french fries were really outstanding - they were coated with something (flour, cornstarch?) that made them extra crispy.  They were well seasoned and it was hard not to eat all of them immediately.  The coleslaw was average basic mayonnaise based coleslaw and not very memorable for being particularly good or particularly bad.  I had a crab cake sandwich which was on a simple white bun and sat atop a lemony arugula salad.  It was topped with a mustard sauce and a corn and onion salsa. It was a moist and delicious crab cake, with plenty of crab and the toppings really made this a flavorful sandwich.  Kerry's haddock sandwich was a simple piece of baked haddock topped with some flavored breadcrumbs.  I did not try it but Kerry reported that it was good.  Unquestionably though the fries were the stars of the afternoon for sure.  I would definitely come back to Finz, especially to try their dinner menu which is full of lots of fresh fish and seafood.