In the months that follow, Tom and Cathy weather the ups and downs of founding a small business, soothe many a client's fragile ego, plan and pull off a fairy-tale wedding, minister to two of the most appealingly waifish children this side of Dickens, and generally work themselves to the bone-all the while producing some of the most exquisite food Dublin has ever seen.īinchy is a master spinner of tales, the kind of storyteller who captures the rich tapestry of relationships at work in even the most ordinary of lives.

But as they soon learn, chasing a dream demands far more than just cream puffs and canapés. When the perfect location finally becomes available at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, they jump straight into renovations, ignoring the owner's mysterious eagerness to sell. Cathy Scarlet and her partner Tom Feather had wanted to open their own catering firm ever since they attended college together. 'Whatever made us think that a catering business had anything to do with producing food?' asks the exasperated heroine of Maeve Binchy's Scarlet Feather. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. These and many more wend their way through a story of love and heartbreak and laughter. Meanwhile, around them, a magical supporting cast of classic Binchy characters weaves its spell: a comically dreadful but endearing set of twin children a lonely man looking for the foster daughter he had to hand back to her real parents years earlier the glamorous aunt whose financial backing of Scarlet Feather has a dubious source. Against a background of hilarious catering triumphs and disasters, these key relationships begin to crumble, and the aphrodisiac of shared business trials and tribulations starts its inevitable work on Cathy and Tom.

Tom's hopelessly obsessive love for his beautiful, ambitious model girlfriend, Marcella, and Cathy's increasingly distant marriage to Neil, form the heart of the emotional tangles in the story. Hannah is furious that her clever lawyer son, Neil, should have married her maid's daughter, and is even more outraged when Cathy sets up Scarlet Feather with Tom. In particular Lizzie cleans the house of Cathy's mother-in-law, the fearsome Hannah Mitchell. Cathy's father is an inveterately optimistic gambler on the horses, and her mother, Lizzie, is a domestic cleaner. Tom is the son of a builder and his fanatically devout wife, both of whom are disappointed that he hasn't joined the family building firm.

Scarlet Feather is set in contemporary Dublin, and is the story of Cathy Scarlet and Tom Feather, who go into business together as caterers.

Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy