In her New York Times bestselling memoirs Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples, Ruth Reichl has brilliantly illuminated how food defines us. Now she celebrates this theme in her dazzling fiction debut novel of sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must find the courage to let go of the past in order to embrace her own true gifts.

Lively letters between a self-centered young girl and her wise great-grandmother reveal generational differences and a deep affection for each other.

Thea Teawinkle plants an odd, purple, bean-shaped seed in her backyard for her class science project, with astonishing results that even the experts she writes to--including a botanist, an arborist, a museum curator, and a symphony director--cannot offer any explanations for.

In letters to her recently deceased cat Mud, eleven-year-old Lorelei chronicles the ups and downs of her sixth-grade year, during which her parents separate, she gets a part in the school play, and she becomes friends with the cutest boy in her grade.

Grieving for her older brother Lucas, Oakley Nelson agrees to spend a few months with her mother at Aunt Jo's California beach house, where a notebook of letters from Lucas to Oakley challenges her to feel better and enjoy life, but a budding romance reminds her of the chances Lucas will never have.

In 1960, Jennifer Stirling wakes in the hospital and remembers nothing--not the car accident that put her there, not her wealthy husband, not even her own name. Searching for clues, she finds an impassioned letter, signed simply "B," from a man for whom she seemed willing to risk everything. In 2003, journalist Ellie Haworth stumbles upon the letter and becomes obsessed with learning the unknown lovers' fate--hoping it will inspire her own happy ending....

Zoe, a teenager in Bath, England, writes letters to a death-row inmate in Texas, hoping to find comfort in sharing her guilty secret over the death of a friend with someone who can never tell her family.

Thirteen-year-old Atticus "Tick" Higginbottom begins receiving mysterious letters from around the world signed only "M.G.," and the clues contained therein lead him on a journey to the perilous 13th Reality and a confrontation with evil Mistress Jane.