That book is a double portrait: of the difficult, lonely, and intense domesticity of both moles and Hamer. The first book, “ How to Catch a Mole,” was an account of how Hamer, who worked for many years as a mole catcher-which is surprising not only because the job sounds like it belongs in a Wordsworth poem but also because Hamer has been a vegetarian since childhood, and often had to kill the moles he caught-ceased to be a mole catcher. “Spring Rain,” the third book in a trilogy, follows Hamer as he becomes too old to work as a gardener anymore. Rather, she seeks to gently put it on a level playing field with its alternatives and open the minds of her readers to the culinary possibilities of dairy beyond American shores. Mendelson does not propose forgoing fresh milk altogether. The book charts the gradual spread of “dairying,” from its origins in the prehistoric Near East and Western Asia to its prevalence in northern Europe. In “ Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood,” the culinary historian Anne Mendelson questions fresh milk’s hegemonic grip over the American mind.
Despite this consensus, milk retained its reputation as a nutritional bulwark in the United States and elsewhere. More studies over the following decades would draw similar conclusions about the difficulties that many communities of color faced when trying to digest unfermented milk. Six decades ago, Pedro Cuatrecasas, a resident at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, found concrete evidence that the ability to digest lactose might be a genetic condition linked to one’s racial background.
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