SYNOPSIS (The story in brief)

A Needle in the Heart (the title story) - Vintage
There are six stories in the book:
- A Needle in the Heart
- Silver-Tongued
- Families Like Ours
- Mr Blue Satin
- Soup

Most of the characters in this book have homely domestic backgrounds. "Soup" includes my recipe for bottled tomato soup. If you do preserving, you might like to try it, it's delicious (I didn't get the recipe the way my character did):
Tomato Soup
12lbs tomatoes
7 onions
1 oz celery salt
7 cloves
1 cip sugar
2 tblsp salt
2 tspns pepper
1 tblsp butter
8 tblsp flour

Quarter tomatoes and onions. Add the celery, salt, cloves, sugar, salt, pepper and parsley and boil half an hour. Strain through a mouli. Melt butter , stir in the flour carefully. Add the sieved pulp and boil 5 minutes. Bottle and seal at once.