Nellie Murdoch buttoned her dungarees-which she wore only to garden because her husband, Richard, preferred her in skirts-and tapped the Lucky’s white‑and‑red‑foil cigarette package on the table against her hand. One tin of concentrated tomato soup is a pleasant addition to any meat loaf. Mix all ingredients, place in greased loaf tin, and bake in slow oven (300☏) for 45 minutes. About the authorġ pound ground steak (round, flank, or hamburg) 1 cup Purity Rolled Oatsġ medium onion 11⁄2 teaspoons salt 1⁄8 teaspoon pepper 1 cup milk or water

As she uncovers a more sinister side to Nellie's marriage and with pressure mounting in her own relationship, Alice realizes that to protect herself she must harbour and hatch a few secrets of her own. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she begins to settle into her new surroundings, even as her friends and family grow concerned that she has embraced them too fully: wearing vintage dresses and pearls like a 1950s housewife, making elaborate old-fashioned dishes like Baked Alaska, and drifting steadily away from her usual pursuits.Īlice justifies the changes merely as research for her novel.but when she discovers that Nellie left clues about her own life within the cookbook's pages-and in a mysterious series of unsent letters penned to Nellie's mother-she quickly realizes that the housewife's secrets may have been anything but harmless.

However, she is determined to become a writer-and to work hard to build the kind of life her husband dreams of, complete with children.Īt first, the old house seems to resent Alice as much as she resents it, but when she finds an old cookbook buried in a box in the basement, she becomes captivated by the cookbook's previous owner: 1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. When Alice Hale reluctantly leaves a promising career in publicity, following her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. This is a thrilling, audacious story about women daring to take control.'-Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six Karma Brown has long been a favorite of mine and this book is proof she just keeps getting better and better. ' Recipe for a Perfect Wife is a bold, intoxicating, page-turner.

Recipe for perfect wife