Angel Tungaraza and her husband Pius live in modern day Rwanda where they are raising their five grandchildren. Pius teaches at the university in Kigali, and Angel runs a business out of their home baking cakes for all kinds of occasions.
Angel is more than a baker, she is an artist, and feels that her cakes must be individualized to the person they are for, to represent not just special occasions, but the personalities and dreams of their honorees.
To accomplish this, Angel becomes a confidante to all kinds of people. Many of them are other residents of her apartment building, and the friends and colleagues she is then referred to. She finds that the secrets she learns, and keeps, — of affairs, unhappy wives, a prostitute who is supporting younger siblings in the only way she can since they were orphaned in the Tutsi – Hutu genocide, a group of women who order a cake to celebrate a girl’s cutting — illegal but insisted upon by the father, require her to examine her own secrets from herself.
This is a book where cake can bring about hope and recovery, and where a baker can be more than just a baker. Angel brings people together in ways that are healing, joyful, and imaginative, and ultimately she finds healing for herself and her husband.
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