How to Bake a Perfect Life

Ramona Gallagher has weathered a great deal — becoming a single mother at fifteen, and an ongoing family feud that still shadows her business. She runs a bread bakery out of the Colorado Springs Victorian house she inherited, but a slow economy and a run of small mishaps now threaten both the bakery and the home.

When her daughter Sofia gets word that her soldier husband has been badly injured overseas, Sofia flies to Germany to be at his side, leaving Ramona to look after her teenage stepdaughter, Katie. What follows is a story about baking, about the long echo of teenage motherhood, and about two generations of women learning to hold a family together.

Barbara O'Neal — who has also published as Barbara Samuel — writes food-centred women's fiction; How to Bake a Perfect Life is one of her best-known novels.