When Carrie Kabak was a young girl, her cousin let her in on a secret: Parents "hide dirty books and stuff" on top of their dressers. Taking what he said to heart, Carrie promptly found a copy of Edna O'Brien's novel The Country Girls on top of her father's dresser. Stumbling through the difficult words and the naughty bits (she was only nine years old, after all) Carrie found the characters, mood, and dialogue pulled her into a familiar world-here were the mothers, fathers, shopkeepers, and teachers she knew so well in the many places she lived and visited with her family in England, Wales and Ireland. Given her fascination with the accents, personalities, and mannerisms of the rich, unique characters-or caricatures she grew up observing, it is no surprise that reading Carrie Kabak's debut novel COVER THE BUTTER feels much like reading a personal journal.

In COVER THE BUTTER, which Dutton will publish on June 20, 2005, Carrie Kabak delivers the smart, funny and poignant coming-of-age story of Kate Cadogan, a middle-aged housewife who finds herself wondering how she got stuck in an endless rut and loveless marriage. Kate doesn't quite know the answer until one Sunday morning when she discovers the callous destruction visited upon her home-her teenage son threw a party the night before and Rodney, her husband of almost 20 years, is too busy watching sports on the television to care. A few glasses of wine later, Kate finds herself falling down a hole and landing in 1965, in the moment she got her first bra.

What follows is an exhilarating series of adventures with two spirited and devoted friends, an Irish mother who dishes out equal amounts of love and loathing in an effort to control her daughter, a weak-minded and smothering father, a couple of wayward men, an unsatisfying job, a few unwanted pounds and an unflattering outfit or two. Through it all Kate learns to pull away the blindfolds and emotional clamps that have repressed her true passions for years and finally embrace a life without rules.

A captivating exploration of love, friendship and family, COVER THE BUTTER is a novel that proves it's never too late to move to Provence and start all over.