The Last Chinese Chef is the transporting story of how the sensual, romantic elements of haute Chinese cuisine become the perfect ingredients to lift the troubled soul of a grieving American woman. For food writer Maggie McElroy, it's been a year of trying to get her equilibrium back in the wake of her husband's premature death. Now comes a shock: a paternity claim has been filed against her husband's estate. Could he, while working in his firm's Beijing office, have fathered a child?

As Maggie plans a difficult trip to China to investigate the claim, she is offered a chance to profile chef and rising star Sam Liang. What begins as a hoped-for distraction while in Beijing, however, turns into a life-changing event. As Maggie watches three generations of Liangs prepare sumptuous feasts together, she is moved by the Chinese belief that food must always be eaten in a circle of family and friends. As she reads Sam's grandfather's account of life as a cook in the Emperor's kitchen, Maggie discovers the centrality of food in Chinese history. And as Sam cooks a chicken as soft as velvet—spiced along centuries'-old notions of what heals the heart — Maggie begins to fall in love.

In the end, Maggie does unravel the truth about her husband. But most profoundly, The Last Chinese Chef is the exhilarating story of a woman coming home to herself in the most unexpected of places.

As Maggie plans a difficult trip to China to investigate the claim, she is offered a chance to profile chef and rising star Sam Liang. What begins as a hoped-for distraction while in Beijing, however, turns into a life-changing event. As Maggie watches three generations of Liangs prepare sumptuous feasts together, she is moved by the Chinese belief that food must always be eaten in a circle of family and friends. As she reads Sam' s grandfather' s account of life as a cook in the Emperor' s kitchen, Maggie discovers the centrality of food in Chinese history. And as Sam cooks a chicken as soft as velvet— spiced along centuries' - old notions of what heals the heart— Maggie begins to fall in love. In the end, Maggie does unravel the truth about her husband. But most profoundly, The Last Chinese Chef is the exhilarating story of a woman coming home to herself in the most unexpected of places.

This exhilarating story is the transporting tale of how the sensual, romantic elements of haute Chinese cuisine become the perfect ingredients to lift the troubled soul of a grieving American woman.

NICOLE MONES is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light. She started a textile business in China at the end of the Cultural Revolution and ran it for eighteen years, and she brings to her fiction writing an in-depth understanding of China and its culture. Mones isa frequent contributor to Gourmet magazine, which ran an excerpt of The Last Chinese Chefmarking the first time Gourmet has ever published fictionin its pages. She lives in Portland, Oregon.