Synopsis
Tressa is admirably sure of almost everything—her career as a successful food writer, her great friends, and her vibrant New York lifestyle. When Dan—good-looking, capable, and trustworthy—shows up on her doorstep, she hopes that he's The One. Soon they are married, but once all the excitement of the wedding is behind her, Tressa is struck with an awful idea: Maybe Dan isn't the great love of her life, much as she wants him to be. Amidst her uncertainty, Tressa finds an unexpected beacon: the journals and recipes of her grandmother, who had the kind of marriage that Tressa always believed she should have—the perfect marriage. Or so Tressa thought. They're generations and oceans apart, yet in this charming, beautifully imagined novel, two women learn that marriage, like brown bread, is both sturdy and fragile, and never to be taken for granted.
Publishers Weekly
Afraid she is too old to wait for "The One," successful 38-year-old food writer Tressa Nolan marries the next man who asks her-her building super, amiable, kindly, not-very-educated Dan Mullins. Less than two months into her marriage, she realizes she does not love her husband, and never has. Horrified by his blue-collar habits, his desire to move from their Upper West Side apartment to Yonkers and his combative mother, Eileen, Tressa wishes desperately for the counsel of her late Irish grandmother, Bernadine, who taught her to cook and whose 50-year marriage to grandfather James seemed like the model of the perfect relationship. Along with old-fashioned recipes (e.g., Slow-Roasted Clove Ham and Honey Cake), Bernadine's tale, set in 1930s and '40s Ireland, is interspersed with Tressa's, in 2004 Manhattan. The two stories run parallel, each woman learning that as food too hurriedly made is inferior to its long-cooking counterpart, so the passionate love that immediately strikes the heart may be pale in comparison to the slow-growing, long-lasting love of marriage. A fine point, and nicely illustrated, but the mirror chapters becomes predictable, as whatever happens to one woman is sure to happen, in similar form, to her counterpoint. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.