How to Bake a Perfect Life: A Novel

In a novel as warm and embracing as a family kitchen, Barbara O'Neal explores the poignant, sometimes complex relationships between mothers and daughters--and the healing magic ofhomemade bread.

Professional baker Ramona Gallagher is a master of an art that has sustained her through the most turbulent times, including a baby at fifteen and an endless familyfeud. But now Ramona's bakery threatens to crumble around her. Literally. She's one water-heater disaster away from losing her grandmother's rambling Victorian and everything she'sworked so hard to build.

When Ramona's soldier son-in-law is wounded in Afghanistan, her daughter, Sophia, races overseas to be at his side, leaving Ramona as the only suitable guardian forSophia's thirteen-year-old stepdaughter, Katie. Heartbroken, Katie feels that she's being dumped again--this time on the doorstep of a woman out of practice with mothering.

Ramona relies upon a special set of tools--patience, persistence, and the reliability of a good recipe--when rebellious Katie arrives. And as she relives her own history of difficult choices, Ramona shares her love of baking with the troubled girl. Slowly, Katie begins to find self-acceptance and a place to call home. And when a man from her past returns to offer a second chance at love, Ramona discovers thateven the best recipe tastes better when you add time, care, and a few secret ingredients of your own.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Hoping for a quieter life as a bakery owner after struggling as a young parent and suffering a heart-breaking divorce, Ramona Gallagher finds herself caring for an unruly step-granddaughter by immersing the girl in a network of women family members. By the RITA Award finalist author of The Lost Recipe for Happiness. Original.