Schaffer was working on the manuscript to his first legal thriller (Misdemeanor Man
) when his father, Flip, called with an insistent invitation to a one-week baking seminar at a New York culinary institute. He doesn't look forward to the experience, as the two have never been comfortable together since the father abandoned his mentally unstable wife and left the kids behind. But Flip was dying of cancer, so Schaffer agreed to make one last effort at settling their differences. The bickering between them can be playful, but there's an emotional rawness to their conversations, and the memories they churn up, that confuses more than it heals. "I forgave. But I hate him, still," Schaffer admits. The baking class is not just a sharply focused backdrop but a buffer from the most painful revelations about the suffering Schaffer endured in adolescence—unfortunately, the class ends halfway through the memoir, and the last sections deal with his father's final days at home. The disruption to the narrative momentum is jarring, but Schaffer's dark humor holds the two stories together. (Sept.)
