The Recipe

After a bestselling author vanishes without a trace, three generations of her family gather at their Italian farmhouse, desperate for answers but determined to honor a long-held culinary tradition in this sweeping, evocative novel of food, longing, connection, and renewal from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick.

For generations, Franca De Leonardis’s family has gathered at her farmhouse in Abruzzo every May Day to prepare an elaborate stew made only in their province from the remnants of winter and the first offerings of spring. But this year, one person is painfully absent: Franca’s daughter, Paola, a New York-based novelist who disappeared from her home five months earlier.

After putting her studies on hold, Paola’s daughter, Sunny, travels to Italy for the annual celebration, joining a far-flung family already strained by grief, distance, and disagreements over the future of their beloved old house. Lauren, an American food anthropologist who plans to film the preparation of the traditional recipe arrives with worries and questions of her own. Shortly before she disappeared, Paola hinted to Lauren that she had discovered something remarkable on the family’s land.

As a motley crew of cooks soak beans, forage greens, prepare pasta, and try to keep their spirits up despite Paola’s mysterious disappearance, long-held secrets begin to surface. Secrets about love and marriage, sacrifice and survival, and the extraordinary ways food can preserve a family’s history and feed the future.

Rich with warmth, suspense, and Charmaine Wilkerson’s signature insight into family and newfound community, The Recipe is an unforgettable story of inheritance and identity, of what we carry with us and what we leave behind, and of the people and places that call us home.