Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“Sassy, brash, acrobatic and colorful . . . I want to read it again and again.” —Time

“Impressive . . . Soffer’s style is natural and assured.” —Meg Wolitzer, All Things Considered, NPR


Lorca spends her life poring over cookbooks to earn the love of her distracted mother, a chef, who is now packing her off to boarding school. Desperate to prove herself, Lorca resolves to track down the recipe for her mother’s ideal meal. She signs up for cooking lessons from Victoria, an Iraqi-Jewish immigrant profoundly shaken by her husband’s death. Soon these two women develop a deeper bond while their concoctions—cardamom pistachio cookies, baklava, and masgouf—bake in Victoria’s kitchen. But their individual endeavors force a reckoning with the past, the future, and the truth—whatever it might be.

In Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots we see how food sustains not just our bodies, but our hopes as well. Bukra fil mish mish, the Arabic saying goes. Tomorrow, apricots may bloom.


“A profound and necessary new voice. Soffer’s prose is as controlled as it is fresh, as incisive as it is musical. Soffer has arrived early, with an orchestra of talent at her disposal.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

“Moving [and] extraordinary.” —Atlantic

“A work of beauty in words . . . Soffer is a master artist painting the hidden hues of the human soul.” —New York Journal of Books