Crystal Wilkinson chats about her new book, “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts,” with Shepherdstown resident Zoe Simon-Lavine and her mom, Shepherd University Professor Monica Larson in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History & Education on Feb. 15. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — “One of the wonderful things that has happened on this 18-city book tour, as I’ve been telling the story of Appalachia and telling the story of my Black family in Appalachia and my Black kitchen ghosts, [is] the magic that has happened. I usually walk away in tears, because everyone has kitchen ghosts,” said Crystal Wilkinson in the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History & Education on Feb. 15.

Wilkinson, who was the 2019 Appalachian Heritage Writer in Residence and West Virginia State Common Read author, returned to Shepherdstown to give a reading from her new book, “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks.”

The evening began for Wilkinson and many others with a special dinner at Alma Bea, titled “A Taste of Praisesong.”

“We always host a meal for visiting writers — I like for students to be able to meet them and different people that we have [come to campus],” said Shepherd University Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities Director Sylvia Shurbutt, who moderated the event’s question-and-answer session. “Mary Ellen Diaz, of Alma Bea, she called me up and said, ‘Please come to my restaurant!’ She looked at Crystal’s book [and] fixed a lot of the recipes. We so, so enjoyed all of the people that joined us for that event.”

The decision to hold the meal at Alma Bea proved highly popular, with its dessert, Granny Christine’s Jam Cake with pawpaw sauce, selling out early in the evening.

Although this was the first book the award-winning author has written with recipes in it, she made it clear that it was far from the first of her books to prominently feature food.

“Food is culture,” Wilkinson said. “As a writer, I have to think around sense of place and what it is — it’s geography, it’s landscape, it’s accent — all of those different characteristics, and food is one of them. Even before this book, I’ve always written about food, because you can’t characterize a people without having them interact with food, as far as I’m concerned.”

Nearly every seat was filled in the Byrd Center auditorium, with book and food-lovers alike swarming to attend Wilkinson’s reading, question-and-answer session and book signing.

“We’re paying homage every time we make each of these recipes,” Wilkinson said. “Like my grandmother said of her mother, ‘Mine don’t taste like mama’s!’ Even when I hear someone say, ‘Ooh, these biscuits are so good,’ I say, ‘They don’t taste like Granny’s.’ Is that nostalgia? Is that romanticizing? Is that because she was straight farm-to-table and the lard that she used? Is it because I was a vegetarian for 20 years and don’t cook with lard? Is it because the lard was from the pigs that she raised, just a few yards from her back door, as opposed to not knowing where the lard came from?”

Wilkinson noted she had to do some painstaking research, to accurately write portions of her book from the perspective of her ancestors. One of those ancestors, she said, was her great-great-great-great grandmother — a slave who was common-law married to her master and bore him 11 children — one of whom is pictured on the front cover of her book.

“This is Patsy Riffe, who I knew about my entire life. Patsy Riffe is probably the one woman in Casey County, Kentucky history — there’s a Patsy Riffe Ridge in Casey County, which is 98.89 percent white,” Wilkinson said, mentioning books on the county’s history typically include a single paragraph explaining who the ridge’s namesake was. “Usually the paragraph says something like, ‘Patsy Riffe was a famous colored business woman in the county. Her father was a white business man. Her mother was a slave.'”

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, the inspiration to write about her “kitchen ghosts” struck.

“I’m talking about ancestral memory. I’m talking about muscle memory. That sort of ghosting. I’m not talking about Casper!” Wilkinson said, with a laugh. “I’m talking about the ways in which the generations continue, that we don’t even know about.

“Ever since I’ve been on this book tour, I’ve heard people say that they’re adopted or that they have no access to their Chinese ancestry or whatever ancestry it is,” Wilkinson said, noting that often proves not to be the actual case. “Then you get them talking long enough and they say something like, ‘Oh yeah! I remember this coffee jello.’ And then I go, ‘Huh! Where does it come from?’ And you find out it comes from there.”

“Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks” is available for purchase at Four Seasons Books.