It's not easy being the adoring mother of one, living in an eccentric tower in the middle of the English countryside coping with a short-sighted goat, a grumpy father-in-law and a dysfunctional swarm of bees, but Esme Slack manages it. Or does she? Sometimes the gob-smackingly gorgeous French sourdough bread she insists on making every day is the only thing she truly believes she is getting right. But is that because it tastes so delicious, or because it reminds her of the girl she once was and, more particularly, of Louis, the village boulanger who saved her from a life of being half-baked? All she has left of the Frenchman is the sourdough starter he gave her, made from the fermented juice of an apple planted 190 years before by his great-great-great-grandparents and still going strong in her kitchen cupboard...until she meets him again by chance.

 

Sarah-Kate Lynch has been a journalist for more than twenty years (she started, she claims, when she was seven) but far prefers making things up to trying hard not to. Her first three novels are published by Black Swan.

She hopes one day to be able to say that she spends her time between her homes in Auckland , Dublin and New York . At this stage, however, she only has one home and that is in Auckland . In Dublin and New York she sponges off her friends like anyone else.