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Summary
Summary
For fans of Like Water for Chocolate and Woman on Top comes a deliciously magical and mouth watering story, filled with wonder, discovery, and new beginnings.
Thirty-one-year-old Wynter Morrison long ago gave up on finding a suitable career and drifted into the role of trophy wife to an ambitious advertising executive. After her husband decides that their marriage was a mistake Wyn leaves behind her posh, pampered life and ventures north to Seattle, spending aimless hours sipping coffee at a local bakery. As the sweet aromas of freshly-baked bread awaken memories of her apprenticeship at a French boulangerie, she feels the desire and ambition to bake bread once again.
Soon, Wyn finds--in the kneading of the dough and the scent of yeast hanging in the air--an unexpected and wondrous healing power that helps her to rediscover that nothing stays the same. Inspiring and beautifully rendered, Bread Alone is an uplifting debut novel guaranteed to warm the heart.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The First Wives Club acquires a junior member in this pleasant if unremarkable first novel. When 31-year-old Wynter Morrison finds herself locked out of her house by her handsome, spoiled husband, David, who has taken up with a beautiful blonde, she is devastated. With only three years' experience teaching high school, one year in real estate sales and seven years experience as the "Executive Wife" and "Charming Hostess," Wyn has little success fending for herself at first, but a growing self-awareness emerges slowly once she leaves her old lifestyle in Los Angeles. After visiting a friend in Seattle, Wyn moves there to take a job at a local bakery. No longer dependent on David, Wyn finds solace in living a spartan existence and working hard in the early morning hours baking bread, though she is frustrated by the unimaginative veteran baker. Her memories of a year abroad in Toulouse during her sophomore year at UCLA where she learned to bake bread in a family bakery are sprinkled throughout the story, as are her favorite bread recipes. Over the course of this long, convoluted tale, Wyn transforms from a "willfully ignorant," betrayed wife living in sunny L.A. whose greatest worry is what to wear to the next symphony ball, to a flannel shirt-wearing bakery owner living in the rainy Northwest who finds love with a bartender-turned-writer. In this engaging novel, Hendricks creates a compelling narrator whose wry, bemused and ultimately wise voice hooks the reader. Even though Wyn's story is predictable at times, this is a well-written, imaginative debut. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (July 10) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A dumped wife ponders where it all went wrong-and bakes a lot of bread in the process. Thirty-one-year-old Wynter Morrison had it all, including David, her tall, blond, handsome hubby who didn't even want her to work (not worthwhile tax-wise, says he). Well, Wynter is ready to give up teaching and play the rich-wife role to the hilt. After all, David's a marketing whiz and a slave to his high-powered job. But when he suddenly decides to leave the rat race-and her-Wynter just doesn't believe it. He means business, though, and it's not long before Wynter is on her way to Seattle to cry on the shoulder of her childhood friend, CM, a cynical beauty and man magnet. CM tells Wynter that she couldn't possibly have been happy "tooling around L.A. in your sports car and sitting through boring committee meetings and eating artistic little arrangements of sushi for lunch and giving dinners for people you loathe and spending shitloads of money on clothes that don't even look like you." Wynter is nonplussed, obviously never having thought much about it. Her biggest problem now is finding gainful employment. Perhaps the bread-baking skills she learned at her student job in France will come in handy? She's soon up to her elbows in organic flour from the Pike Place Market and mulling things over when the unpleasant reality of divorce begins: Her lawyer wants to know if Wynter's relationship with CM is, um, entirely platonic and hints that her soon-to-be-ex is likely to cause all sorts of trouble. Her mother insists that Wynter is suffering from clinical depression. But Wynter copes bravely, makes new friends, and finds true love: hunky Mac MacCleod, a vision in plaid flannel and denim. She comes up with loads of swell recipes, too, tucked in here and there for carbohydrate-craving readers who won't find much meat in this all-too-familiar tale. An okay addition to the food-as-metaphor-for-life genre-if not an inspired debut.
Booklist Review
At the age of 30, Wynter Morrison has lost all that once defined her--her husband, her home, and her social life. She is left with $3,000 a month in support, one great friend, and the city of Seattle. And all that amounts to quite a lot, on second thought. And having a second thought is precisely what Wynter does in this charming, romantic first novel. Taken in by her best friend, Wynter is directed toward a bakery that gives her a job and to a bar that supplies her with a man. Interspersed between deliciously subtle courting and details of making bread (including recipes), Wynter cycles through the process of grieving over her marriage, beginning a new life, and finding her way. Woven in with the story of Wynter is the tale of the bakery and the other women who work there, as well as flashbacks to Wynter's term in France as an apprentice baker. The various points of view provided by the wide cast of characters looking into the modern quest for contentment imbue the novel with lightning-fast revelations of how life gets crafted day by day. The result is a novel that is fun to read and meaningful to remember--no small feat at all. Readers who respond to the mix of romance, self-discovery, and food discussions will want to connect this novel with the ones listed in the Read-alikes column, on the opposite page. --Neal Wyatt
Library Journal Review
When in doubt, bake bread at least that is what Wyn Morrison does. She was once known as Wyn Franklin, but one day her husband informed her that they were growing apart and that he needed some time to himself. Having been a career wife who managed her busy ad executive husband's successful social life, Wyn is lost. To top it all off, her mother has found happiness with another man after being a widow for 15 years. Wyn still desperately misses her father and can't quite become accustomed to the idea that her mother is going to remarry. Breadmaking is her solace, and it leads quickly to a job in a bakery and a chance at a new life. In addition, Wyn meets Mac, a handsome bartender who could prove to be the man able to make her truly happy. Dotted with bread recipes, Hendricks's engaging first novel will appeal to fans of a good story and intriguing characters. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.