You wouldn’t think the early years of best-selling home arts author Susan Branch of Vineyard Haven had any sprinkling of pixie dust about them: She grew up in the 1950s in a suburban town called Reseda in the San Fernando Valley, on the flip side of the L.A. mountains, a landscape of tract homes plunked down amid orange orchards and chicken farms.
Ms. Branch was the oldest of eight children, an oversize amount that might scream “dysfunction!” in any household lacking a generous mother, a fond father, and a happy disposition on the part of the eldest daughter. The Branch household held all those glad elements, and hence a troop of fairies filled little Susan’s imagination, and yielded a life — in spite of the usual ups and downs of growing up, and a devastating heartbreak — of color, charm, and enchantment.
A self-taught watercolorist and a disciple of the Julia Child school of cooking, Ms. Branch, some 30 years ago, sat down to write a cookbook. The pages of “Heart of the Home,” and the 13 (soon to be 14) books to follow, are inscribed with her whimsical yet mercifully legible handwriting. Each page boasts a border of, say, lavender stems, or red and yellow polka dots, or purple pixies. She’ll add an old photo of, say, Elizabeth Taylor about to kiss some lucky actor in a convertible car, and drawings of half-moons, rolling pins, and a bunch of bananas along with a quotation by a favorite Victorian author — for instance, this by J.M. Barrie: “So come with me where dreams are born and time is never planned.”
One could say she throws in everything but the kitchen sink, and yet it all works. Each page is perfect, pure pleasure. You could frame it and hang it in the hallway and never take it down.
Eleven more home-arts books followed, published by Little, Brown, each with some defining theme of domestic bliss: “Mom,” “Summer,” “Baby Love,” and now, with the same unique technique of “homemade,” as in watercolored and handwritten pages, Ms. Branch has set out to write her memoirs in two volumes, the first “Fairy Tale Girl” (Spring Street Publishing, $28.95) to be followed in short order by “Martha’s Vineyard, Isle of Dreams.” These two books are a prequel to the briskly selling “A Fine Romance: Falling in Love with the English Countryside.” This recent oeuvre covers Branch’s second two-month excursion to England with the “love of [her] life,” Island elite chef Joe Hall, guiding light of the Black Dog kitchens and cookbook.
Ms. Branch was born in 1947, and if you desire greater detail, her baby photos and weight at the first week of birth (8 pounds, 12 ounces) are itemized on the inside page. And if this sounds self-centered, be not afraid. The artist fills each page with so many details to delight — drawings full of whimsy, such as a stork lofting a gift-wrapped baby, white curtains blowing in an afternoon naptime breeze, and a quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “The sky is filled with stars /Invisible by day.” You may find yourself mopping up each written and illustrated morsel with a smile on your face.
Caveat emptor: If you wish your daughter or son to grow up with a college education, be sure not to give “The Fairy Tale Girl” to her or him. Neither of Ms. Branch’s parents attended college, and it never occurred to her to enroll (well, she tried a couple of days at a community college and found it wanting). Instead she matriculated right into life, moving to San Luis Obispo, a charming town on the central coast of California, and renting an apartment with her best friend Diana. (“It was a town that some day, far into the future, Oprah Winfrey would call ‘the happiest city in America.’”) Diana signed on for nursing school, and Ms. Branch won a counter job at a burgeoning record company. She would later marry its founder, entrepreneur Cliff Branch.
After some years as the most artistically brilliant housewife in America, after divorce cashed her out of that career choice, Ms. Branch emerged as an entrepreneur in her own right, with an exciting brand that sells everything from stationery to pajamas to teacups to hooked rugs, in addition to her amazing books. “Fairy Tale Girl” shows how this domestic goddess learned it all at her mother’s knee: sewing, cooking, needlepoint, the works. She might almost have had a childhood identical to that of the young ladies in a Jane Austen novel, except that she never learned to play the pianoforte. But the handwritten letter of an earlier era is an intrinsic part of her work, along with her eye for design and self-taught painting talent in the style of her idol, Beatrix Potter (you can read about her visit to Beatrix’s Hill Top Farm in “A Fine Romance”).
For all of Ms. Branch’s good cheer, her portrayal of life’s tribulations is rendered with a purity and honesty that has a contrary effect of boosting your spirits. This is basically what we demand of memoirs — that they enable us to cope with our own challenges, and to remind ourselves that it all comes out all right in the wash, especially if we pursue the gifts we’ve been given.
And, of course, no one needs to be quite as madly creative as Susan Branch. Any one little talent will do. You can haul out your favorite cookbook and start a slow-cooker butternut squash soup to make sense of these short winter days. Knit! Book yourself a piano lesson! You’ve always loved math? Get cracking on your taxes!
And to peer further into the fairy tale world of Susan Branch, visit susanbranch.com.
