Bittersweet Journey: A Modestly Erotic Novel of Love,Longing,And Chocolate - Hardcover

I can best describe it as modern myth, a fable that takes its protagonist, and its reader, on a journey--geographic and gastronomic to be sure--but also, and more significantly, emotional and psychological. Bittersweet Journey explores a woman’s obsession with chocolate, and her obsession with longing, and the ways in which they intersect

Charlotte falls in love with chocolate, and love, in childhood, when her father gives her candy kisses in lieu of real ones. At 39, she leaves her husband and makes a pilgrimage to the chocolate capitals of the world, taking her to the places in her psyche where the craving for chocolate resides. Charlotte descends into her own underworld and comes back into the light, whole, like a latter-day Persephone.

I believe that women sense that chocolate contains--chemically as well as magically, mysteriously--the missing dark aspect of the feminine self. So we crave chocolate, and eat it, in an attempt to make ourselves whole again, but the wholeness doesn’t last, because chocolate is a substitute for the real thing, as are relationships designed to perpetuate longing for its own sake.

My hope is that Charlotte’s story will function for readers, particularly women, the way myths have always functioned, and the way it functioned for me as a writer. Her journey is all women’s--the one we will take, if we are brave enough.