It opens in Honolulu in 1964 as friends and family gather for Bohai Leong’s funeral. Told from multiple points of view and moving back and forth in time over several generations of the Leong family, the story centers on how people remain tied to one another. I need to make a dish to sober them up.’ He invented this Herring Under a Fur Coat dish because it's starchy and it's got protein and a lot of mayo, to kind of settle down his patrons so they would calm down a bit.Wong’s earnest debut novel is a sweeping family saga in the tradition of Amy Tan. The bar patrons were arguing and getting into fistfights and breaking china and windows, and the bar owner was like, ‘This has to stop. It was invented on New Year's Eve right after the Russian Revolution in a bar. It's this beautiful salad, it’s layered, and it has potatoes and smoked herring and shredded beets, and it's got this fun origin story. Kachka has Herring Under a Fur Coat, which is in the database. What's cool about Oregon and the Portland food scene specifically is that I found a lot of foods from the book that are available here. Have you found any of the dishes from the book here in Portland? People were saying, ‘You gotta move out of butter and try something else like stone.’ So she went to Italy and tried other mediums, but she was like, ‘No, my true passion is butter.’

She started by making these little shell-shaped butters for her neighbors to raise money, and then she started doing these like large shows where she would sculpt in butter to a brass band, and she would do it live and do busts of presidents. There’s this butter sculptress from the 19th century-her name is Caroline Shawk Brooks.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. We chatted with Wong about the upcoming book in advance of its release. On October 14, Powell’s Books is hosting a free livestream event with Wong and Portland food writer ( and PoMo contributor) Liz Crain-you can sign up for the event here. The book, published by Workman Publishing, comes out October 12. Read it in bite-sized pieces, or binge the whole thing. Oregon gets a whole spread for its natural wealth of mushrooms, while Washington’s featured food is the giant phallic geoduck clam. At a time when travel is restricted, this 400+ page tome takes readers on an illustrated, intriguing worldwide journey through foods of the past and present: a map of fish sauce factories in the Roman Empire a brief overview of “Yoshoku,” or Japanese Western food a history of Senegalese eggrolls a guide to burnt rice dishes from Puerto Rico, Colombia, Korea, and Iran and a recipe for Benjamin Franklin’s favorite milk punch.

Diamond head by cecily wong