The Summer Kitchen: A Novel

In an instant one womans 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 its no Halloween prank―its the Feds who have come to arrest her husband Evan for a white-collar crime. Noras enviable life in the eighteenth-century house shed 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 Noras 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 didnt 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.