"Alice Hale is the reluctant new owner of a suburban house outside of New York; Alice misses the city but is determined to work hard to build the kind of life her husband dreams of, complete with children. At first the house seems to resent Alice as much as she resents it, but after she discovers an old cookbook filled with handwritten notes, she becomes captivated with the previous owner, Nellie Murdoch--a 1950s housewife who left clues to her life in the cookbook's p. and a series of letters to her mother that, mysteriously, were never sent--and settles into her new life. Alice's friends and family grow worried that she has embraced the house and its past too fully--dressing like a 1950s housewife in dresses and pearls, cooking elaborate old-fashioned dishes like Baked Alaska--but she says it is all just research for the novel she claims to be writing. However, when Alice discovers the secrets Nellie kept for decades, her own grip on reality begins to loosen and and we are on the edge of our seats to discover how far she's willing to go to get the life she wants."