The Gluten-Free Bible
The Thoroughly Indispensable Guide to Negotiating Life
Without Wheat
Foreword by
Anthony J. DiMarino, M.D.

An Owl Book/Henry Holt & Co., New York

From the publisher...

Since its original publication in l995, Jax Lowell's classic, Against The Grain, has helped tens of thousands of celiacs follow the gluten-free diet with creativity, resourcefulness, and deep-hearted wisdom. This comprehensive, long-awaited, and exhaustively revised edition reflects all that is new in the ever-widening and exciting world of the gluten-intolerant.

At nearly twice the size of its predecessor, The Gluten-Free Bible is packed with authoritative, witty, and practical advice for every aspect of living without wheat and other glutenous grains. Confronting some of the toughest situations a celiac will face, Lowell discusses the intricacies of shopping, traveling, eating out happily, dining in safely, buying cosmetics, negotiating prescription drugs, and parenting as or for a celiac.

With chapters like Sex and the Celiac, Mama's Little Baby Can't Eat Shortening Bread (with kid-friendly recipes and an important discussion of pediatric celiac disease by Michelle M. Pietzak, M.D. Childrens Hospital, Los Angeles), The 7-Year Itch and Other Associated Conditions and How Many Celiacs Does it Take to Change a Label? The Gluten-Free Bible promises to be another landmark in the literature of celiac disease.

And there is food -- ethnic food, everyday food, company food, holiday food and foods kids will actually eat – from celebrity chefs like Nigella Lawson, Rick Bayless, Johnny Alamilla, Bobby Flay, Beth Hillson, Rebecca Reilly, Connie Sarros and Whole Foods Market chef, Lee Tobin, among many others.

Jax has thought of everything with a Celiac Preparedness Plan (who wants to survive a hurricane only to be served Red Cross crackers?) a list of celiac savvy docs (never go to a doctor whose office plants are dead) and a guide to the best of the gluten-free products (what's gluten-free is no longer enough, what's worth your money and the bother is). There's even A Puzzling Condition, world's first gluten-free crossword puzzle served, of course, with the latest research and thinking from eminent experts.

For the newly diagnosed or the seasoned veteran, The Gluten-Free Bible is just that, the ultimate resource for navigating the gluten-free life with a renewed sense of satisfaction, safety, abundance and joie de vivre.

Available at all book sources, February 2005
ISBN #0-8050-7746-4 560 pages/$17 US/$23.95 CAN

Buy The Book! www.barnesandnoble.com

(Top of Page)

Against The Grain
The Slightly Eccentric Guide to Living Well Without
Gluten or Wheat

An Owl Book/Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1995-2005

When this ground-breaking best-seller first appeared a decade ago, back when celiac disease was still considered rare, getting a good gluten-free meal was about as easy as finding an oat in a sack of buckwheat. Al Gore hadn't yet taken credit for inventing the Internet and writing a book about a condition nobody had ever heard of, was considered professional suicide.

No matter. The book's cheeky style and down-to-the-bone advice hit a nerve and caused a sensation in a community as badly in need of a good laugh as it was hungry for a good, safe meal. Celiacs read it aloud, showed it to their doctors and shared it with their family and friends. For many who were misunderstood and marginalized, it was the validation they needed. Tears were shed, good and cleansing as rain. Celiacs took its optimism and assertiveness training to work, to school, and to heart and letters poured in thanking the author for addressing the emotional and social issues the medical community had no time for.

Support groups prepared their members for the cruel, glutenous world by role-playing chapters like Restaurant Assertiveness Training, Etiquette for the Allergic, and Your Cheating Heart. People faced up to friends, family members, spouses, and in-laws who could not and would not honor their special needs. The book inspired many new gluten-free businesses and rumor has it, it was the inspiration for one successful celiac tour company. Suddenly it was okay to carry bread in your briefcase or purse, march into a restaurant kitchen, travel with foreign language dining cards in one's luggage and to expect answers from food companies and processors. No more eating the middle of a sandwich, picking the crust off a pie, taking second place. Going "against the grain" and being slightly eccentric about it, was in. Sitting in the corner and suffering was out. It still is.

To my everlasting surprise, Against The Grain was quoted in a Newsweek article entitled The Perils of Pasta and was featured on the TV Food Network program, In Food Today, National Public Radio, The Philadelphia Inquirer, New York's Daily News and The New York Times. A certain rabbi wrote to tell me I had saved his life and that, according to Jewish tradition, my life was forever bound up with his. I never called him on it, but the idea that a kind stranger might someday pluck me from the brink is an indescribable comfort in an increasingly dangerous world. One letter I cherish thanks me for helping the correspondent find a sense of self-assertion that has affected her life well beyond the dinner table. I've saved them all. Career satisfaction doesn't get much better than that.

As Against The Grain is retired and replaced by The Gluten-Free Bible, I am reminded that I was always taught never to give with the idea of reciprocation. "A gift will come back to you on its own terms," my mother always said. What started out as my stubborn refusal to take less than my full share of life's pleasures bloomed into a determination to share these coping skills with my gluten-challenged friends.  Despite all the early no's from publishers, I persevered.  My efforts have come back to me a hundred fold and with them, a joy beyond measure.

Save your copies. They could be worth something some day when all supermarkets have gluten-free aisles and testing for celiac is given as routinely as cholesterol screening and flu shots.

Always remember this slightly eccentric piece of advice:

(Top of Page)

No More Cupcakes
& Tummy Aches
A Story For Parents and Their Celiac Children to Share

Illustrated by Jane Kirkwood

Foreword by
Alessio Fasano, M.D.

"Izzie wasn't very tall for seven. Not even for six.Or five. Even if she stood on her tippy, tippy toes, her ponytail just reached the top of Daddy's chair…"

And so begins the tale of little Izzie O'Brien who isn't as tall as she wants to be and believes that by eating lots of cupcakes, she will get tall, maybe even tall enough to be a ballerina. Too many cupcakes cause a tummy ache that won't go away because Izzie is a celiac. And that's when the trouble starts.

Living gluten-free, especially when all the other kids are eating pizza and cookies and other treats, isn't a piece of cake until Izzie's mom takes matters into her own hands. Soon Izzie is happy again and thanks to her friends, teacher and her own parents, she learns the greatest lesson of all – being loved and feeling truly special is what really makes us tall.

Beautifully illustrated by artist Jane Kirkwood (to see more of Jane's art, go to the Links Page and select her name from the drop-down menu), and complete with a real-life happy ending in the form of a gluten and lactose-free cupcake recipe from Lee Tobin, the mastermind behind Whole Foods Market Gluten-Free Bakehouse (click here for store locations and goodies) created especially for the book, No More Cupcakes & Tummy Aches promises to live in the hearts of the littlest celiacs for generations to come. Or as Alessio Fasano puts it, "Isabel O'Brien is just what the doctor ordered."

Click here to view an excerpt from the book in PDF format. Viewing requires Adobe Reader. If you don't have it installed on your computer, you may download it for free by clicking HERE.

Available for order at bookstores, Whole Foods Markets, The Gluten-Free Pantry or direct from Xlibris, 888-795-4274.

Reseller and trade orders, contact Bob Santare at 888-4274, ext. 101.

Hardcover, $22.99 (ISBN #1-4134-6255-3)
Softcover, $16.99 (ISBN #1-4134-6254-5)

Buy the Book! www.xlibris.com

(Top of Page)

Mothers
A Novel

Authors Guild Back-In-Print Edition, iUniverse, 2005

"Now more than ever, we need to read serious works about families that are as untypical as the families all of us are part of, just to stretch our knowledge of what family is, how a family works and how love, hope and joy can and must co-exist with fallibility, anger and misfortune."
-Jane Smiley

Before there was a debate about same sex marriage…before the talk of amending the Constitution to exclude all but traditional families in the definition of family…before a Presidential election was waged on fear and exclusion, there was just Claire and Theo, who fell in love and wanted a child so badly, they broke the law to do it. Set in 60's and 70's Manhattan and on Long Island's North Fork, Mothers explores the idea of what a family is from the point of view of the son who grows up believing the two women who are his parents are the best any boy could have. Mothers illuminates the universal longing of all children for parents who belong. It traces the times one such family has survived, how its history, heartbreak and hard-won lessons, now almost four decades later, live on in the heart of the man, husband and father it has made.

It would be hard to imagine parents more perfect than Claire and Theo. It is l965 and in a rambling apartment overlooking Central Park West, they raise their son Willy with enthusiasm, encouragement, and what might now be called unconditional love. It might also be called unconventional love, for Claire and Theo are both women.

As a young child, William Roland Bouvier-Hirsh knows only the warm, supportive, slightly offbeat world of Claire, a respected photographer, and Theo, a successful caterer. Together they fill Willy's life with laughter, fun, and an extended circle of friends and relatives. Sunday dinners at Theo's table are legendary, trips to Uncle Peter's Long Island farm are any boy's delight, and visits to Uncle Baxter and Aunt Jessica's Greenwich Village brownstone are an exotic adventure.

But Willy soon learns of another world, one in which his mothers are viewed with hatred and mistrust. When that world intrudes and forces Claire and Theo to reexamine their lives and their relationship, Willy is the only person who can prove to them and to the courts that "normal" is in the eye of the beholder. With the help of an unforgettable character who lives under Sheridan Square, the young Willy finds the courage to say no to the decisions of adults and prove that life with both his mothers is the only life he will have.

(Click the image below to download an excerpt in PDF format. To view and print this document you will need to have Adobe Reader installed on your computer. If you don't have Adobe Reader, you may download it for free from Adobe.com by clicking HERE.)

Buy the Book! - www.barnesandnoble.com

(Top of Page)