What happens when a 56-year-old fiction writer decides to ditch it all and attend professional pastry chef school for a year? In writing that brings to mind the work of journalist/chef Michael Ruhlman, Butter Cream: A Year in a Montreal Pastry School tells the story of eleven months of whipping, spreading and creaming in the pursuit of perfection. A chronicle of an intense year of learning and tasting, dramas at the stove and in the locker room, Butter Cream is about fights, friendship and competition, fallen cakes and rising doughs. And sometimes, unexpectedly, the sheer joy of baking. It is a memoir that also includes trips back to her mothers and grandmothers kitchens and to her own complicated relationship with all things sweet.