The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Berg, Elizabeth. The Confession Club. New York: Random House, 2019.

After seeing a play with her oldest friend Gretchen Buckwalter, retired town librarian Joanie Benson is inspired to make a complicated Victorian-style fruitcake to serve at the next meeting of their weekly women’s club. Now known by its members as Confession Club, the group started as a supper club among a group of friends from Iris Winter’s baking classes. After meeting for a while, and becoming increasingly intimate and comfortable in each others’ presences, the women began a new tradition of sharing something they did wrong or other transgression. They soon discover how much better they feel after confessing, and there is an aura of loving acceptance and forgiveness among the friends that bring everyone a sense of peace and belonging that keeps them committed to the club and each other. The club rotates to a new house every week, with the hostess preparing a themed meal and a lavish dessert, with a designated confessor each week.

This week, the club is meeting at Joanie’s and she soon realizes that the “Black Cake” she plans to serve with her slow-cooked stew has a recipe that defies Joanie’s competence as a baker, so she enlists baking instructor Iris’ help. Iris is a native Bostonian, descended from blue-blooded Puritan stock and she used to own a clothing consignment store there before moving to Mason for unexplained reasons unspecified amount f time ago. As a gesture of friendship and also of self-promotion, Iris volunteers to buy the ingredients and bake the cake herself for Joanie, offering to deliver it on time for dessert at Joanie’s club meeting. Doing her shopping out of town, she passes some beautiful wild lilacs growing in front of an abandoned farmhouse, and reminds herself to go back the next morning to cut some.

John Loney arrives in Mason after hitching a ride out of Chicago, where John lived a homeless lifestyle, hanging around with street denizens and getting by on handouts and salvage, as well as on his rugged good looks and charm. When he passes the same wild growth of lilacs, he jumps out of the truck he is riding in and decamps at the abandoned farmhouse, where he feels at peace and decides to stay in Mason, which has impressed him.

When Iris goes back to the abandoned farmhouse to cut the lilacs, she meets John who offers to help. Despite her initial wariness, she accepts his invitation inside and she can she that he has done what he can to fix it up. Iris is attracted to John, and admires his affinity for nature and zest for life, but knows that he is emotionally unstable. For as close as she wants to be to him, his moodiness and unpredictability tell her to leave him behind before he can hurt her. What Iris does not know is that in addition to his traumatic Vietnam flashbacks, John also has an unhealthy obsession with his ex-wife Laura, who took their infant son and left John 40 years earlier in fear after John almost strangled her during a recurring nightmare. John can not forgive himself the shame and regret, and feels that he will never find peace of mind without another chance to see Laura face-to-face and apologize. After a couple of memorable romantic encounters, Iris has allowed herself to fall for John despite her customary New England reserve and has even begun entertaining fantasies of living happily together with him at the farm, where he is so happy and in his natural element.

After keeping her relationship secret, Iris is finally moved to share the details about John at Confession Club, where she learns that John’s unlawful presence at the abandoned farm is known to the town authorities, who will soon evict John. The distant owners of the property are willing to sell it for a pittance to get it off their hands, and the police will first offer John the chance to buy the place before making him leave. At this news, Iris knows that she will be unable to resist buying the farmhouse, which she does without telling John.

Meanwhile, John has found out via social media enough abut Laura to be able to track her down at her home, in the suburbs outside Cleveland, but Iris has no idea that extent of John’s plans without her. When Iris goes to tell John the news about the farmhouse, he tells her that he is leaving in the morning to fulfill his stubborn mission to apologize to Laura regardless of how she might feel about it. Iris is heartbroken at John’s departure, but she is still looking forward to living at the farmhouse alone, as she is planning to get lots of animals including baby goats and llamas, for which she will need volunteer assistance from local school kids.

After making his way as far as the driveway in front of Laura’s house in a wooded subdivision, John sees Laura with her wealthy, handsome boyfriend and knows instantly that she is fine without him. Seeing her look so happy and peaceful is enough for John to feel unburdened of his past, and he decides to go to California and avoid Winter. After passing through Las Vegas where he is helped out by a kind stranger, John rescues an abandoned dog from the side of the highway and is soon given a ride by a friendly, dog-loving trucker. John is so excited about the dog, whom he names Karma, that he does not realize at first that he is headed in the opposite direction from where he wanted.

Iris has by now also adopted two rescue puppies, and had been looking forward to John’s expert skills in training them. One day, Iris has some friends and their new baby over to the newly restored farmhouse for lunch to celebrate. As she is cleaning up, she sees a figure coming toward her, a man with a dog by his side.