The Secret to Happiness by Suzanne Wood Fisher

 

The Secret to Happiness by Suzanne Woods Fisher, due out in May, is the second volume of the Cape Cod Creamery series. The setting is Cape Cod in an ice cream shop, not in high demand when the story begins in late January.  

 

The mother-daughter duo of Marnie and Dawn Dixon has made a second start with their lives when Marnie purchases an ice cream shop in Chatham. Dawn has the talent for making ice cream, as she had done at home in Needham with her father until he died. Marnie needs to up her game in the ice cream making department so that her daughter can feel secure enough to leave the shop long enough to get married and go on an African safari.

To do this, Marnie attends Penn State’s Ice Cream Short Course for a 3-day workshop for ice cream store owners. She is surprised to see her niece Callie Dixon carrying a tray of ice cream cups because the last she knew, Callie was the executive chef at a convention hotel in Boston. Marnie invites Callie to join her and Dawn in Chatham on the Cape at their ice cream store, where they have an apartment upstairs. Dawn is not particularly happy about the invite as she and Callie were once so competitive which led to a breakdown in their cousinship.

Callie, fired from her dream job when she made a huge mistake in the kitchen causing 200 people at a conference to develop food poisoning, is beside herself, floundering as she attempts to find a new job. She is also keeping a big secret about her health.

Callie’s addition to the store apartment makes for close quarters, and Callie ends up spending too much time wasting away in bed. Dawn, always one to take charge, drags Callie to a community class run by Bruno Bianco, author of a book about attaining happiness. Bruno singles out Callie as a special project as she resists his approaches to turn her thinking inside out.

As Callie tries to start anew, she finds her niche in the ice cream shop that turned coffee-muffin shop to supplement to store’s business in the winter. Dawn has been making the muffins but Callie quickly identifies what makes Dawn’s muffins rubbery and unappealing, and Callie throws them out each night after the others have gone to bed and bakes fresh, delicious muffins from Dawn’s recipes. Baking and working with Bruno are just the beginning steps to putting Callie back together.

While this is the second book in the series with a third soon coming along, this book can be read as a standalone as the author offers quick summaries of events in the first book, The Sweet Life.

Suzanne Woods Fisher’s bread and butter has been in the Christian fiction market with a specialty in Amish fiction and nonfiction. Her interest in the Amish came from a grandfather who was raise Plain. She lives in California with her family and raises puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind.