'The Sweetness of Forgetting,' author Kristin Harmel recipes

October 15, 2012 (WLS) -- In the novel, ''The Sweetness of Forgetting'', Hope McKenna-Smith is no stranger to bad news. She lost her mother to cancer, her husband left her for a 20 year old, and her bank account is nearly depleted.

Her own dreams of becoming a lawyer are long gone. She's currently running a failing family bakery on Cape Cod and raising a troubled preteen.

Now, Hope's beloved French-born grandmother Mamie, who wowed the Cape with her fabulous pastries for more than fifty years, is drifting away into a haze of Alzheimer's. But in a rare moment of clarity, Mamie realizes that unless she tells Hope about the past, the secrets she has held on to for so many years will soon be lost forever.

Tantalizingly, she reveals mysterious snippets of a tragic history in Paris. And then, arming her with a scrawled list of names, she sends Hope to France to uncover a seventy-year-old mystery.

Hope's emotional journey takes her through the bakeries of Paris and three religious traditions, all guided by Mamie's fairy tales and the sweet tastes of home. As Hope pieces together her family's history, she finds horrific Holocaust stories mixed with powerful testimonies of her family's will to survive in a world gone mad. And to reunite two lovers torn apart by terror, all she'll need is a dash of courage, and the belief that God exists everywhere, even in cake.

In addition to telling Hope's story, author Kristin Harmel includes 9 original recipes in the novel. You can meet Harmel at a book event going on at Paris Club, 59 W. Hubbard Street, TONIGHT (Monday, October 15) 5-7 PM. It's free and open to the public.

Read more about "The Sweetness of Forgetting" on kristinharmel.com

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