An aunt who helped raise him and a Faulkner scholar recount Truman Capote's early years, portraying the zany family that shaped his idiosyncratic life, personality, and talent

Truman Capote: The Story of His Bizarre and Exotic Boyhood by an Aunt Who Helped Raise Him

Simmons, James C.

Rudisill, Marie

Biographies & Memoirs

William Morrow & Co.

Book by Rudisill, Marie, Simmons, James C.

Olympic Marketing Corp

Sook's Cookbook brims with delicious, uniquely southern recipes such as green olive jambalaya, watermelon rind preserves, and poinsettia cake, as well as classic buttermilk biscuits and lemon meringue pie. Marie Rudisill first began working on Sook's Cookbook with her nephew, Truman Capote, in the late 1940s to pay tribute to her charming, eccentric aunt, Sook Faulk. After putting the project aside for many years, Rudisill developed the book's methodology on her own: using nineteenth-century plantation daybooks for inspiration, she paired recipes with profiles of family and community cooks.In these pages, you'll meet Sook -- made famous in Capote's story, "A Christmas Memory" -- with her kitchen windowsill herb garden (complete with two pet chameleons to ward off bugs) and her penchant for cooking on her big, black woodstove year-round -- even on the hottest summer days. Recipes for tea sugar cookies and lemon-and-parsley butter tea sandwiches follow the profile of Marie's aunt Jenny, who ran the Faulk household, as well as her own renowned hat and accessory shop. Rudisill also spotlights often-overlooked cooks -- Little Bit, the official house cook, and Corrie Wolff, a housekeeper and occasional cook, whose recipes feature the Cajun and Creole flavors of Louisiana, as well as Sem, who prepared special food for parties, weddings, and funerals. In his foreword, Gourmet contributing editor John T. Edge calls Sook's Cookbook -- first published in 1989 -- "one of the most compelling regional cookbooks of the latter half of the twentieth century." He also celebrates Marie Rudisill's character and spirit -- from her sassy appearances on the Tonight Show, where she became known as the Fruitcake Lady, to her deep appreciation of the people and the old southern ways she knew and loved in Monroeville, Alabama. Much more than a cookbook, these pages pay homage to a small town in the Deep South and the intriguing people who made it come alive.

Sook's Cookbook: Memories and Traditional Receipts from the Deep South

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Regional & International

LSU Press

Fruitcake is a jaunty little collection of heirloom fruitcake recipes selected by Marie Rudisill from a nineteenth-century family farm journal owned by Sook Faulk, a cousin of Rudisill and Truman Capote, who immortalized Sook in his novella, A Christmas Memory. Rudisill, made famous as "The Fruitcake Lady" on Jay Leno's Tonight Show, aims to elevate the much-maligned reputation of what she calls "the queen of cakes" in this book, which features 23 enticing recipes, including Peacock Fruitcake, Chocolate Fruitcake, Civil War Fruitcake, Pore Man's Fruitcake, and Farmer's Fruitcake. These are interspersed with pithy facts about fruitcake, an excerpt from A Christmas Memory, bits of kitchen wisdom and baking tips, and charming family reminiscences, most of which feature Truman and Sook. With a new foreword by cookbook author Jean Anderson, this entertaining volume enriches our experience of southern cooking by raising up one of its least-trumpeted culinary traditions.

Fruitcake: Heirloom Recipes and Memories of Truman Capote and Cousin Sook

Baking

The University of North Carolina Press

Gathers traditional Southern recipes for breads, cakes, candy, desserts, eggs, main dishes, meat, poultry, seafood, and side dishes

UNKNO

Marie Rudisill, aka "The Fruitcake Lady," made her first Tonight Show with Jay Leno appearance in December 2000 in a now classic segment, when she helped Jay Leno and Mel Gibson make fruitcake. Since 2002 she has regularly dished out sassy advice to fans in her popular segment called "Ask The Fruitcake Lady." 
A frenzied mother asks, "My teenage son sleeps all the time. How do I get him to help around the house?" The Fruitcake Lady responds with a no-nonsense answer: "Well, all you got to do is get up there and say, Get your ass out of the bed! And I mean get it out!" Ask the Fruitcake Lady will gather together some of Marie's finest morsels of wisdom and advice, including: 
-Spicy advice on profanity in children -Nutty wisdom of talking to houseplants -Dishing out a good helping of sass when she addresses curing hangovers -Outrageous ways of dealing with mothers-in-law and bachelor parties -Finding a rich man to marry -What a single, soon-to-be 40 woman needs more than a man 
"The Fruitcake Lady" is not just any nonagenarian from Florida. She is Truman Capote's aunt, and it was her book, Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote and Sook, which brought her to the attention of Jay Leno. Her quips to viewers questions have made her a favorite on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Ask the Fruitcake Lady: Everything You Would Already Know If You Had Any Sense

Humor & Entertainment

Puzzles & Games

Hyperion

This book is a thoughtful reflection on the literary origins of four of Capote's important early works - 'A Christmas Memory', 'The Grass Harp', 'Children on Their Birthdays', and 'Other Voices, Other Rooms' - in light of the boyhood experiences that inspired them. Written by his maternal aunt.

The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote

Regional U.S.

Cumberland House Publishing

Critter Cakes & Frog Tea: Tales and Treats from the Emerald River

Children's Books

Literature & Fiction

Crane Hill Pub

A collection of fruitcake recipes by Truman Capote's great aunt

Fruitcake : Memories of Truman Capote and Sook

CAPOTE, TRUMAN

Faulk, Sook

Professionals & Academics

Hill Street Press

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Books by Rudisill, Marie