With the Fire on High

 

Acevedo, E. (2019). With the fire on high. NY: Quill Tree Books

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo tells about 17 yeard-old Emoni, who had a baby at the end of her freshman year. Her mother is dead and her father is living in Puerto Rico, so Emoni lives with her grandmother and Emma, her 2-year old daughter. The story is narrated by Emoni and begins with her senior year in high school. In school, Emoni chose not to attend a special school for teenage mothers and instead stays in regular classes through her senior year. One of the electives courses offered that year is culinary arts, which involved a trip to Spain. Emoni struggles with her choice to take the class due to money and taking care of her daughter but decides to sign up because she has a passion for cooking at home. 

The course starts well when Enomi makes a chocolate pudding that her teacher, Chef Ayden, praises. Things take a turn though when Chef Ayden asks her to throw away a dish because she did not follow the recipe, then Emoni begins to skip class.

One day Emoni goes to an expensive restaurant, Cafe Sorrel, with her grandmother and notices an unexpected ingredient in her meal. She asks about it and gains the attention of the head chef. This encounter inspires her to re-join the culinary arts class and Chef Ayden asks her to head the fundraising for the Spain trip. She decides to do this by opening a "min restaurant" in an unused part of the school cafeteria but did not raise enough momey. She then proposes that the class take over the school's tradional Winter Dinner and create restaurant-quality food for it. 

The Winter Dinner is a success and Enomi is given a business card from the chef from Cafe Sorrel. Emoni and her class fly to Spain, where she is paired with another female chef, Amadi. In Amadi's restaurant, Enomi has to cook a dish for customers by herself. Upon returning home, Enomi finds out that she has been accepted into a culinary arts program at Drexel University. She then has to decide what she will do after graduating high school. How will she pay for college and juggle school while looking after Emma. She decides that she will do the Drexel program part-time while asking for a job at Cafe Sorrel. The chef allows her to start working there right away.

Acevedo uses cooking and recipes as a metaphor for navigating and understanding life. She uses tasting descriptions to describe the stages of Emoni's maturation: the sour, the savory, and the bittersweet. As Enomi begins to understand the "recipe" for success she learns to savor her experiences. The novel covers many topics including teenage pregnancy and the responsibilities that come with it, dealing with a parent's death, a father's absence, and relationships.