Aftertaste

Mira Rinaldi lives life at a rolling boil. Co-owner of Grappa, a chic New York City trattoria, she has an enviable apartment, a brand-new baby, and a frenzied schedule befitting her success.

Everything changes the night she catches her husband, Jake, “wielding his whisk” with Grappa’s new waitress. Mira’s fiery response earns her a court-ordered stint in anger management and the beginning of legal and personal predicaments as she battles to save her restaurant and pick up the pieces of her life.

Mira falls back on family and friends in Pittsburgh as she struggles to find a recipe for happiness. But the heat is really on when some surprising developments in New York present her with a high stakes opportunity to win back what she thought she had lost forever. For Mira, cooking isn’t just about delicious flavours and textures, but about the pleasure found in filling others’ needs. And the time has come to decide where her own fulfilment lies – even if the answers are unexpected.

Keenly observed and deeply satisfying, Aftertaste is a novel about rebuilding and rediscovery, about food passionately prepared and unapologetically savored, and about the singular contentment that comes with living–and loving–with gusto.

Editorial Reviews

Meredith Mileti’s debut novel serves up a satisfying and delicious story of rebuilding a life after everything is suddenly and cruelly taken away…a keenly observed novel that is, in part, a comedy of manners…There are scores of wonderful scenes of Mira either cooking up a storm or eating her way through Pittsburgh from the perfect biscotti at Bruno’s Bakery, to Italian sausages and cheese from The Pennsylvania Macaroni Factory to oversized sandwiches at Primanti Brothers (it’s enough to make you want to hop on the next plane to Pittsburgh)…Meredith Mileti’s debut novel is as thoughtful and poignant as it is wickedly funny. It is one to savor-recipes included. New York Journal of Books

Mileti’s debut will be inspiring to women in all stages of their lives and careers. The sometimes spicy and temperamental main character undergoes great changes that accurately reflect the experiences one has while recovering from major life events. With in-depth descriptions of food and gourmet cooking, not only will this novel make you salivate, but the story itself is startlingly realistic without any of the expected melodrama, making for a moving and unforgettable read.RT Book Reviews