Beatrice, Jessie, Louise, and Margaret are fixtures in the Hope Springs Community Church. They are also best friends – the type, for example, who accompany each other to doctor’s appointments. When Margaret’s cancer resurfaces, the heartbroken women react to it in different ways. Beatrice thinks that a Christmas cake cookbook contest would be a good way for the women to deal with the news; after all, the Women’s Guild Cookbook is what brought them together years ago. As the women busily construct this collection, Margaret decides that she needs to go to Texas to visit her mother’s grave. Jessie wants the friends to take the journey together, and they set off on the cross-country expedition just before Christmas – in a “borrowed” (later reported stolen) funeral home van. Once in Texas, they meet up with Charlotte, their former pastor who moved out west to run a battered women’s shelter and who is part of their “Forever Friends” group. Margaret is able to make peace before dying, and the women’s friendship grows stronger through the experience.
Christmas Cake is Lynn Hinton’s fourth book in her Hope Springs series.
Check this title’s availability and the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.
