BREAD ALONE
"[Bread baking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells...there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread."
M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
I first read Bread Alone in 2002. The cover art intrigued me, and I turned it over to read the back; before I'd finished reading, I was already pulling out my money to take it home. I read it in a single night, the first of many such times I would do that, always wanting more when I reached the final page.
Justine Wynter Franklin knows her marriage isn't very happy just now, and nothing seems to symbolize that more to her than taking a 'cube' of bread from the bread machine, a gift from her husband. David has never understood that making bread, for Wyn, is not just about the end product, but the entire creative process. This is a woman who has studied in a Paris bakery for an entire summer, and learned how to really feel the dough come alive, in a way that only true bakers know. (And yes, I know this feeling very well.)
As her marriage crumbles, Wyn leaves California for Seattle, where her best friend CM lives. She's come there just to get away and ponder through the situation, but when she returns home she finds her possessions outside the house, the locks changed, and life--as she knew it—over. She returns to CM's place, and makes a loaf of bread, and if you think that's too simple a sentence, it doesn't begin to show the depths of this woman; that loaf of bread lands her a job.
Judith Ryan Hendricks is a writer of such skill that every one of her characters come alive in this book, become people you recognize, identify with, love or pity or hate. There was so much of my own life at the time that mirrored Wyn's, and I wanted to see how she would come through the fire, better on the other side. I wanted to know how Wyn had come to lose so much of herself in her marriage, and when she would realize that who she had become was someone she'd never meant to be. I wanted to know more about CM, and Mac, and Wyn's own mother Johanna, and the father Wyn still missed and mourned. I loved watching what had been a loving but distant relationship between mother and daughter bloom into something based on more similarities than Wyn could ever have imagined.
Ultimately, I wanted to live in the small house she found, decorate cakes with Diane, sling espresso with Ellen. I wanted to hang out at the bar where Mac worked, listen to the mixed tapes he made for her. I loved the way Wyn began creating new bread recipes, because that's something I do, myself, and it is a wonderful feeling when something no one ever dreamed of—until you—turns out to be something delicious. Most of all what I loved was watching this woman emerge from a feeling of victimized hopelessness into someone who knew with all surety who she was, and is, and will be. I liked the woman she became, and I learned a lot from her, fictional though she is.
Anyone who loves baking will love this book. Anyone who is a fan of someone making something good for herself, when everything she thought was hers is taken, will love this book. And it is not a 'chick lit' book by any means; my husband read it, and was as drawn into it as I was. I have read this book so many times that I now own it in paperback—my copy to lend—and hardcover, which is my copy to keep. I was delighted to find a sequel a few years later (The Baker's Apprentice) and to read in an author interview just yesterday that a third book is in the works:
“I think my next project is going to be the third part of Bread Alone. I’m kind of interested in finding out what those characters are up to about 15 years down the road.”
Apparently a lot of other readers have found Wyn and Mac unforgettable, too.
Review by Beth Anne Cox
Children's Services
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