Everyone knows about its amazing green tiled men’s room. Fewer people know about The Oak Room bar. Tucked just off the main dining room The Oak Room is my favorite place to eat lunch on a rainy day in Nashville.

             Today was such a day. Settled into a green leather couch eating Brunswick stew made with confit chicken and a Caesar salad I was glad for the autumn rain. The salad was topped with a large lacy disc of parmesan and a pristine shiny anchovy. Strewn through the lettuce leaves were croutons worth eating that tasted as if they may have begun life as brioche. The Brunswick stew arrived in a little cast iron pan. Chock full of chicken and corn and lima beans the dish was perfectly cozy. The coziness was enhanced by the dimness of the room and by the sweetness of the service provided by the genial Jeff.

             My assistant Adam and I were downtown because I was on Talk of the Town. I have a special fondness for that midday show. I started watching it when I was pregnant with my daughter. Confined for most of the spring and summer of 1987 to bed rest I watched daytime talk shows and read Russian novels and waited for my baby to come.

              I had a simple prayer. Please God, do not let my womb be her tomb. I remember the day I realized those words rhymed. Today the daughter I prayed for (between segments of Talk of the Town, in the commercials during Oprah, and as I turned the pages of Turgenev) is twenty-two years old.

            As I talked with Meryl about my new book, during a generous four minute segment, I couldn’t help but think of the women at home, particularly the young women pregnant women, but all women somehow confined.

             The people on the other side of the teevee  screen, the people on set, all those years ago had served me by being there and talking about interesting things and bringing the world to me when I couldn’t go out into it. Today I hoped maybe this day I was  serving somebody by being present and talking about what interested me--black spy families and love after divorce.

             After the taping Adam, an aspiring folk-rock star with Roy Orbison hair, and I, a third-time out novelist in gray pearls and cowboy boots,  were trying to decide where we should eat lunch when I realized it had to be the Hermitage. Rebel Yell, the novel, takes off during a conversation at the Hermitage Hotel and we were just around the corner. And their food is good.

             It was an hour of sweet calm before the storm of a hundred and sixty people coming for dinner to the house tomorrow for bourbon and barbecue. It was an hour to rest and be thankful. And it was moment to decide if we would serve our guest Rebel Yell’s or Old Fashions. Emerging from the dark warmth of the Hermitage, I knew our drink would be Rebel Yells. The first sound my daughter made, I recognized. It was a courage cry. A rebel yell.

             And somehow going on the Talk of the Town today reminded me of how completely intertwined my beginnings as a mother and my beginnings as a writer were. Listening to my daughters voice I had found my own.

            A cocktail in honor of brave young women everywhere—even when they’re just home watching teevee.

             Rebel Yell for a Crowd

4 parts Rebel Yell Bourbon

1 part Triple Sec

½ part fresh lemon juice

Serve over ice garnished with a fresh orange slice. For a single drink do the Patterson House version--but this is the formula for a party.