Compromise Cake: Lessons Learned from my Mother’s Recipe Box

Life is full of compromise. And generally, whether we freely admit it, or grudgingly accept it, it happens to us all. We aren’t always blessed with the opportunity to pursue our dreams. Sometimes we have to make hard choices. In Nancy Spiller’s book Compromise Cake – Lessons Learned From My Mother’s Recipe Box, we learn quickly that Nancy’s mother sacrificed a teaching career to marry, have children, and ultimately lose herself, her identity in a life that led to mental illness.

In the Sixties, the time frame Nancy is drawing this memoir from, women didn’t pursue careers. Marriage and families was the expected route women took upon leaving home. Compromise Cake uncovered long-lost memories for Nancy, as she worked her way through the recipes in her mother’s recipe box. As we journey through Nancy’s memories of her mother, and the melancholy that at times forced Nancy into the parent role, and her mother into that of the child, it’s easy to see that the compromise was passed on from mother to daughter. We see Nancy’s struggle to become herself, to stop compromising, to live a more satisfying life than her mother did. There is great love in these pages. And bittersweet hope too.