Home Economics

A darkly humorous and wise novel about a disgraced American homemaking icon determined to win back her former Hudson Valley house—in a story that asks: what would you do to get the home, and the life, you loved back? When former 1990s American homemaking icon, Punch Tillis, agrees to fill in as a cater-waiter for a fundraiser at Brieskill Farm, the historic Hudson Valley home she and her husband lovingly renovated (and disastrously lost), she expects to serve ninety plates of wilted greens and leave. Instead, after the event ends, she accidentally falls asleep in her old bedroom. The next morning, realizing no one has noticed her mistake, Punch decides she might as well stay another night. Or maybe two. What’s the harm? Thirty years earlier Punch Tillis had built an empire as a do-it-yourself-and-do-it-right model for women everywhere: cookbooks, a television show, and eventually, her own line of custom paint.