'Such beautiful writing.' – Jodi PicoultThe wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents' attention, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother – her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother – tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden – her mother's life outside the home, her...