The Summer Kitchen

In an instant, one woman's perfect world is turned inside out

When Nora Banks goes to answer the doorbell very early one November 1st, she thinks it must be tardy trick-or-treaters. But it's no Halloween prank--it's the Feds, who have come to arrest her husband Evan for a white-collar crime. Nora's enviable life in the eighteenth-century house she'd filled her days renovating to museum-quality perfection is upended.

In this of-the-moment story about the loss of wealth and social prominence, the private-school mothers in Nora's exclusive community close ranks against her and her young sons. Only the boys' nanny Beatriz stands by the family. To support her children, Nora is forced to take a job in the same bakery in which the mothers share coffee every morning. While tempted by the offer of an affair with one of their husbands, she reaches into reserves she didn't know she had. Thwarting a malevolent wife intent on running her out of town, Nora launches a local business of her own, The Summer Kitchen Bakery-Café. Along the way, she changes the town, its characters, and her way of thinking about life, family, money, and romance.

Author: Karen Weinreb
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 07/06/2010
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780312640545

About the Author

KAREN WEINREB is a former journalist with degrees from Yale and Oxford Universities who wrote for newspapers in Australia. Weinreb worked at Random House in New York City, and was a researcher for Harold Evans' The American Century.