When Celia begins restoring her late grandmother's kitchen, she expects to find old dishes, chipped cabinets and the familiar traces of a woman who measured most things by instinct rather than cups and teaspoons. She doesn't expect to find a recipe box hidden behind the pantry wall.
Inside are twelve handwritten cards dating from the 1940s. At first, they're charming. Old family recipes. Familiar dishes. Handwritten notes in her grandmother's unmistakable script.
Then Celia notices the dates. The strange ingredients. The names that don't belong. And references to a man no one in the family ever talks about.
Celia begins writing to her cousin Patty as she recreates each recipe, trying to understand the young woman her grandmother once was. She soon uncovers a wartime romance with a man named Walter, a love story the family has always believed ended when he went off to war and never returned. Except he did return. And the truth about what happened afterward is far more complicated than a lost love story.
As each recipe reveals another piece of the past, Celia discovers that her grandmother made a decision that protected the people she loved while changing several lives in ways she could never have predicted. Even her grandfather knew more than the family realized.
Now Celia has to decide what to do with a story that was never meant to be told and whether preserving the truth means revealing every secret.
