Rich, white Cornelia and poor, black Tweet share a Mississippi kitchen for 15 years, rolling out pie crusts, peeling figs, making conversation. As the years go by, each reveals her own crises, and in her moment of deepest need, each is rescued by the other.
"It is rare when a book this fine enters the world of contemporary American literature." - The Boston Globe

Two women share a Mississippi household for fifteen years, rolling out piecrusts and making conversation. Cornelia is rich, white, and pampered, the mistress of the house, who oversees a seemingly perfect world of smooth surfaces and stubborn silence. Tweet, her housekeeper, is a poor, black, world-weary woman with a ghost-ridden past. As the years go by, Cornelia and Tweet each endure moments of uncertainty and despair; each, in her time of need, is rescued by the other.

In the footsteps of Southern writers like Peter Taylor, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor, Ellen Douglas celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit in this story of two women bound by transgression and guilt, memory and illusion, gratitude and love.

"Ellen Douglas is not just one of our best Southern novelists. She is one of our best American novelists." - The New York Times Book Review