On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein 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, who must always know too much about the people she loves.