Transcript / LoLT: The Twisty Tale of Salt Water Taffy and Two New Books — 23 May 2025

This is a transcription of LoLT: The Twisty Tale of Salt Water Taffy and Two New Books — 23 May 2025

David: Just a quick programming note: This will be the last episode of The Library of Lost Time, at least for a little while. We’ve realized that doing two podcasts at the same time was maybe a bit too ambitious for this year. So we’re hitting pause on Library of Lost Time for the summer.

David: But we’re not going anywhere! The next episode of Strong Sense of Place will drop next Friday — we’re getting curious about Portugal — and we’re excited to get back to our deep dives into places and the stories they tell.

David: And don’t worry! We’ll bring Library of Lost Time back in the fall. Until then, thanks for listening and making room in your week for a little bookish joy.

[cheerful music]

Melissa: Coming up, a melancholy ghost story for foodies.

David: A Pulitzer-winning graphic novel about the history we inherit.

Melissa: Plus, our Distraction of the Week. I’m Mel.

David: I’m Dave. This is The Library of Lost Time.

Melissa: I think what I’m about to say is pretty obvious to anyone who’s listened to our show, but I’m going to say it anyway. I love to eat. [DAVE] I also enjoy reading cookbooks front to back. But even more than that, I love a novel that includes food like it’s another character. Books like Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. That one is set in Jamaica. Or Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi about sisters in Nigeria. Oh! And Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown. That one tells the story of a wildly creative chef who’s kidnapped by a lady pirate.

Melissa: One of my best reading experiences of 2024 was ‘Piglet’ by Lottie Hazell. That’s a blacker-than-espresso dramedy about a woman whose perfect life crumbles like a stale cookie when she’s betrayed by her fiancé. It’s stuffed with food scenes that range from delicious to disgusting and hilarious to tragic, and it’s about the many ways we try to satiate our hunger for love.

Melissa: So I’m primed to love the new novel ‘Aftertaste’ by Daria Lavelle. The promo copy reads, ‘A food story to binge. A ghost story to devour. A love story to savour.’ [DAVE]

Melissa: Here’s the setup.

Melissa: The main character is a young man named Kostya. His father passed away when Kostya was 10, and Kostya’s connection to his family’s Ukrainian cuisine died along with him. Now Kotya is muddling his way through life as a dishwasher — and he’s haunted in a very particular way. He can’t see the ghosts, but when a spirit is near him, he can taste their favorite foods.

Melissa: He discovers that if he cooks the thing he can taste, the living and the dead can be reunited. He feels like he’s finally discovered his life’s purpose. But there are two big problems: One: His kitchen hijinks are putting the stability of the afterlife at risk. And two: The girl he’s fallen in love with? She’s a psychic, and she has her own secret connection to the Afterlife.

Melissa: An early review described it as a ‘twisty plot filled with mouthwatering descriptions of food and some very hungry ghosts.’ I read the first chapter and was instantly hooked by the setup and the writing. I’m not the only one! Before the book was released, Sony Pictures optioned it for a film. Apple Books said it’s heartbreaking, strange, and a novel to savor. Other reviews used words like poignant, menacing, exuberant, mouthwatering, and brimming with life. It’s Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle.

Melissa: If you’re a foodie that also loves wine, I have another quick tip for you. Also out recently is ‘Lush’ by Rochelle Dowden-Lord. It’s set at a winery in France and the story unfolds over just a few days. Four wine experts — influencers, really — and strangers to each other, have gathered to drink one of the rarest wines in the world. But each of them is at a personal crossroads. Their wine-fueled adventures — described as ‘raucous debauchery and transformative truths’ — leave them forever changed. That one is ‘Lush’ by Rochelle Dowden-Lord.

David: I’m going backlist today. For reasons. A couple of weeks ago, a graphic novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography. That book is called ‘Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir,’ and it’s by Tessa Hulls. I hadn’t read it yet. So I picked up a copy. And now I’m joining the very long line of people saying, ‘Wow. This is really good.’

David: It’s an autobiography, but it’s also a multi-generational family saga. It’s about the author Tessa Hulls, her mother, and her grandmother. Three generations of Chinese women grappling with politics, trauma, exile, and each other.

David: For me, there are two things that make this book stand out from other memoirs.

David: First: Tessa’s voice. She’s emotionally honest, self-aware, and compassionate. She’s doing the work—looking at her family’s problems, and the complexities of being the child of an immigrant and the granddaughter of a woman who went through a lot. There’s this sense, as you read, that she’s writing to understand. And it’s powerful.

David: Second: Tessa has something most writers don’t: a full-length account of her grandmother’s life in her own words. Here’s the context. Tessa’s grandmother was a journalist in Shanghai. She survived political persecution during the rise of Communist China and eventually fled to Hong Kong with her young daughter—Tessa’s mother. Once in Hong Kong, she wrote a bestselling memoir about her experiences. And then—shortly after its success—she had a mental collapse. She never recovers. By the time Tessa came into the picture, her grandmother was a shadow. A gray ghost of herself, haunting the family house.

David: Here’s what makes that incredible. In a lot of multi-generational stories—fictional or otherwise—there’s a pattern. The first generation experiences a trauma. The second absorbs it and tries to survive. And the third—often years later—shows up with questions, knowing something’s off but not having the whole story.

David: In this case, the grandmother left a book. She wrote down what happened to her. Tessa reads it—years later, she has it translated—and begins to fill in the emotional gaps. And because she’s an artist and a writer, because she has that rare ability to step outside the story and still tell it truthfully, the result is illuminating. It’s clear-eyed and layered and full of love, even when it’s painful.

David: The book also has a strong sense of place, specifically, China. We see it from multiple angles: from someone who once lived there, who grew up there, and then from Tessa’s perspective, coming in as an outsider, trying to make sense of the legacy she’s inherited.

David: Feeding Ghosts won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography. It also took home the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for its contributions to our understanding of race and diversity. Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, and Time Magazine have all praised it for its handling of trauma and identity.

David: Tessa Hulls herself is fascinating. She’s a writer, a visual artist, and a long-distance solo traveler. She’s been to all seven continents. Her curiosity really show up in her work. It’s got a exploratory, investigative energy. Like she’s mapping out her family’s history while she’s still figuring out where she fits inside it.

David: If you love memoirs that go deep… if you’re drawn to books about generational trauma or cross-cultural identity… or if you want to read more about modern Chinese history through a very personal lens—this is an easy recommendation. The book is ‘Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir’ by Tessa Hulls.

David: And now our Distraction of the Week.

Melissa: If you’re listening to this episode on May 23, the day it’s released… Happy National Taffy Day! Although you can get taffy-like candies all over the world, most food historians believe that taffy as we know it was invented in the United States around 1817. And the boardwalk staple Salt Water Taffy was born in Atlantic City, NJ, in the 1880s.

Melissa: But before we get into its surprisingly litigious history, let’s talk about how taffy is made. It begins with sugar and butter boiled together with flavorings like chocolate or vanilla or molasses. Strong start! Then the mixture is stretched and pulled and folded in on itself. That adds microbubbles of air that give taffy it’s silky-chewy texture.

Melissa: Back in the mid-1800s, an invitation to a taffy pull was the highlight of the social calendar. The host would cook the taffy batter, then guests would butter their hands and partner up to stretch and pull the taffy between them. I can only imagine how many romances were born over a rope of warm taffy.

Melissa: When commercial candy makers moved into taffy production, they looked for strong men with stamina and muscles. If you couldn’t manage a 25- to 85-pound batch of warm taffy and stretch it to six feet, you were out. By the early 20th century, the quest was on for a taffy pulling machine — and the history of the taffy puller is surprisingly compelling, if you’re made a certain way. It’s rife with patents — 200 of them — plus, advanced math, and multiple decisions from the Supreme Court. The history is so convoluted, a mathematics researcher wrote a paper called ‘A Mathematical History of Taffy Pullers,’ which, all praise to the internet, is available online.

Melissa: But before the taffy puller peril, there was the salt water taffy tiff. The story begins with an enterprising gentleman named John Ross Edmiston. He owned a small boardwalk postcard shop in Atlantic City. According to legend, one night, an ocean swell flooded the shop, and in the morning, he found all of his taffy soaked in salty seawater. While he was cleaning up the mess, a young girl came in and asked if he had taffy for sale. Joking, he said they had saltwater taffy. She bought it, ate it, loved it, and the word got around about this delicious saltwater taffy.

Melissa: But! The great-grandnephew of Joseph F. Fralinger, the purported King of Salt Water Taffy, has a different story to tell.

Melissa: HIS historical account is prefaced with the words: ‘The following is as accurate an account as is possible of the history of Joseph F. Fralinger’s life and times and his importance in spreading the fame of Atlantic City and Salt Water Taffy.’ I encourage you to read the whole thing because it’s one of those amazing turn-of-the-century stories in which our hero has multiple careers — as a glassblowing, a brick layer, a fishmonger, and a pro baseball player — then lands himself in the history books.

Melissa: But back to the taffy.

Melissa: In 1884, Fralinger opened a cigar store at 724 Atlantic Avenue in Atlantic City and in another location, he opened a concession stand that sold apples, cider, water, and the latest trend in summer drinks: lemonade. According to the lore, he attracted visitors to his stand by juggling lemons.

Melissa: What happened next is up for debate. According to one account, at the end of that summer of 1884, Edmiston — the guy from earlier whose shop was hit by the ocean wave — he got into fisticuffs with his landlord. In a huff, the landlord offered Edmiston’s taffy concession to Fralinger for the next summer. So Fralinger spent the winter learning about candy making and by spring, he’d mastered molasses, chocolate, and vanilla taffy. Eventually, he developed 25 flavors.

Melissa: At some point Fralinger realized he could box up his sweet treats for people to take home. Hawkers on the trains to and from the city used to chant, ‘Don’t go home and say I wish I hadda gotta box,’ and the one-pound box became an iconic Atlantic City souvenir. By 1909, Fralinger had four locations on the boardwalk. Life was sweet.

Melissa: But in 1923, that ol’ devil Edmiston re-entered the chat. He obtained trademark #172016 for the name ‘Salt Water Taffy.’ Then he used that as leverage to demand royalties from EVERY taffy company, including Fralinger’s. Countersuits were filed. I can only assume massive amounts of saltwater taffy were confumed by the judges. It went all the way to the Supreme Court! And in 1925, the Court finally ruled against Edmiston, saying, ‘Salt Water Taffy is born of the ocean and summer resorts and other ingredients that are the common property of all men everywhere.’

Melissa: The next year, Fralinger’s Salt Water Taffy was awarded the Gold Medal for quality at the Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia. You can currently buy a box of Fralinger’s in person at shops in Cape May, Ocean City, and Atlantic City — and you can order it online, packaged in a reproduction of the original 1920s box.

Melissa: If you want to try your hand at taffy making yourself, it doesn’t seem to difficult! If you have a pot, a candy thermometer, and stamina, you’re good to go. You combine sugar, butter, vanilla, salt, and other flavorings and cook it until it reaches a particular temperature. Then you let it cool a bit and start stretching. You stretch and fold it on itself over and over… for 15 minutes. [DAVE] It gets glossy and opaque, and honestly, it looks like fun. Then you roll it into a rope, cut it into bite-size pieces, and wrap each one in a little twist of parchment.

Melissa: I found a recipe on Tasty with a handy video, and another on Food 52 for peanut butter taffy that’s sweetened with maple syrup. And you know, I might make it this weekend.

Melissa: Visit strongsenseofplace.com/library for more on the books we talked about today and the recipe for homemade saltwater taffy and other entertaining taffy links.

David: Thanks for joining us in the Libary of Lost Time. Remember to visit your local library and your independent bookstore to lose some time yourself.

Melissa: Stay curious. We’ll talk to you soon.

[cheerful music]

Top image courtesy of Library of Congress/Unsplash.