thematically fickle

Today’s assignment from Deb at San Diego Momma:

You’re in a bookstore. You see stacks and stacks of books, but one in particular catches your eye. Something about the title. You’re intrigued. You pick the book up, open it, and read the first paragraph. Now you’re hooked. What is the title of the book and what did the first paragraph say?

Ten minutes or less.
250 words or less.
Okay.
Go.

The Round House

Gavin didn’t bother to slice a piece of the cake for himself. It was past midnight, he was hungry and since he planned to toss the thing in the garbage in the morning anyway, he figured, what’s the point? He reached for one of the two forks in the dish rack and turned his attention to the Bundt cake Chloe had made earlier that afternoon. She hadn’t stopped baking since the day Ben died. The house had filled up with all the food brought by cautious neighbors and then, little by little, with blackberry scones, raspberry fudge, lemon bars, snickerdoodles, lady fingers, apple tart tartin, chocolate angel food cake, and peanut butter cookies. Really, it had all started with the peanut butter cookies. Gavin had tried, but it didn’t matter what he said. He couldn’t get Chloe to stop with the peanut butter cookies. Or any of it, for that matter. She was baking away her grief and now, here he stood in the dark, wearing only his boxers, ravenously eating chunks of the chocolate cake, swallowing her sorrow crumb by crumb.