When British lover of novels Eve Petworth writes to successful American author Jackson Cooper to praise a scene in one of his books, they discover a mutual love of cooking and food, speaking a relationships that transforms both their lives. As their friendship blossoms, the details of their unsettled lives unfold for one another: Jack has a colorful group of friends and a rotating group of admiring young women in his love love, but he feels ultimately unsatisfied.Eve, who has a distant relationship with her own mother, is now struggling to overcome the tension she has with her own soon-to-be married daughter. Now when each of them offers, from behind the nails of anonymity and distance, wide and increasingly affectionate counsel to the other, they both begin to confront their problems and plan a celebratory meeting in Paris — a meeting that Eve fears can never happen.