The Day the Calf Ate the Chocolate Cake

The Day the Calf Ate the Chocolate Cake follows the adventure of a young girl on the family farm. It takes place in the past, when life was simple and people lived on small farms that were part of a smaller community. It is a story with some words no longer or rarely part of today’s vocabulary, such as cattle guard, handkerchief, and saucer. It is a lesson on early modes of transportation, such as using wagons or one’s own feet. It takes place during a time when children had chores and learned responsibility. It is a story about a place that really existed, and it is a story of how a young girl saves the family farm.

Rachel Campbell Deddens wrote The Day the Calf Ate the Chocolate Cake as a tribute to her daughter, Margaret, who loved visiting the family farm where Rachel grew up. Raised in Amherst County, Virginia, Rachel now lives in Lynchburg, where she enjoys reading to her two grandsons and hopes they will enjoy reading about Margaret’s childhood adventures. She is a graduate of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, a local historian with twenty-plus years in the museum field, and a culinary historian with a self-published guide to open-hearth cooking, and two self-published children’s books, one a tribute to her son, Jonathan.