The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

Erica Bauermeister's debut novel, The School of Essential Ingredients, is the kind of book you read to relax, enjoy and feel better.

The book isn't what I had expected. It's not really food writing. Rather, it is a series of linked stories about the lives of Lillian, who teaches a cooking class, and her eight students. They range from a couple who survived a long-ago affair and a woman with early-stage Alzheimer's to a lonely widower and a young mother needing time for herself once again. Food is merely the force that unites the group and that symbolizes the diverse, unexpected ingredients that make up our lives.

Beauermeister's prose is simple and effective. She is particularly good at dialogue. The book's only flaw is that things seem to work out too conveniently for everyone. But maybe that's not a flaw in this kind of book. Maybe the hope that things, problems, will eventually work out is one of the "essential ingredients" we need in our own lives and occasionally in our reading as well.