Bread Alone
Judith Hendricks, 2001
HarperCollins
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616889449
Summary
The painstaking process of mixing, kneading, and baking bread may not seem an apt pastime for a woman as acerbic and impulsive as Wynter Morrison. Since graduation from college she has bounced from job to job and man to man, finally ending up as a trophy wife in a posh Los Angeles suburb.
She drives a nice car, eats at elegant restaurants, dresses in beautiful clothes, and rubs elbows with high society. But it soon becomes clear that she's been floating through this life. She's happier in jeans than in Chanel, likes walking in the rain more than sitting in traffic, and would rather tear into a hot loaf of sourdough than pick at a fancy salad.
It takes a hurtful wakeup call from her husband to make Wynter aware that their life together is not working. It also takes more than a few self-destructive drinking binges, tantrums, and harsh words for Wyn to realize that the people who truly love her aren't always going to tell her what she wants to hear.
Finally, it takes the pain, and then comfort, of solitude to show Wyn that she can be beautiful even in a flour-covered apron; that she can turn an empty shack into a home; that settling into an easy relationship can feel like a "mink padded cell"; that her father wasn't the prince she thought he was; that she and her mother are two different people; and that she can find peace and satisfaction in a job where she is needed and appreciated.
Bread Alone is a novel every woman can savor and learn from. It's filled with recipes for happiness, as well as for delicious foods, and it's made even more irresistible by a secret ingredient: a headstrong, sharp-witted heroine who's as rewarding and real as a loaf of truly good bread. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Santa Clara Valley, California, USA
• Currently—lives in Sante Fe, New Mexico
A former journalist, copywriter, computer instructor, travel agent, waitress, and baker, Judith Ryan Hendricks is the author of several novels, including the bestseller Bread Alone, which first introduced readers to Wynter Morrison. (Adapted from the publisher.)
More
Her own words:
• I was born in Silicon Valley when it was known as the Santa Clara Valley, or, more poetically, the Valley of Heart’s Delight, because it was a lovely, bucolic place known for its orchards and sleepy small towns. Which means if you have any mathematical ability at all, you can figure out that I’m older than I act.
• I had a boringly happy childhood in a middle-class suburban family with my parents, who recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary, and my younger brother. My mother instilled in me a love of reading, and I branched out from there into writing, although it took me a while to get serious about it.
• The first thing I remember writing, when I was about 7 years old, was a story about a family whose Christmas tree went missing. That was followed by a few plays coauthored with my best friend, Lynn Davis, and performed in her garage to a captive audience of intimidated younger kids. The plays were mostly outer space/cowboy stories—don’t ask. In junior high it was gothic romance thrillers, and high school was given over to bad poetry about the varsity basketball team. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
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.
Publishers Weekly
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
Library Journal
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. —Neal Wyatt
Booklist
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.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think Wynter let her marriage to David devolve into a state in which the two were barely communicating with each other? Why didn't she try to improve the relationship earlier?
2. Why does David's request that Wynter move out come as such a shock? Why does she try so hard to keep their relationship together?
3. How did Wynter's revelation about her parents' marriage change her views toward her father and her mother? What effect might the knowledge of her father's affair have had on her decisions regarding her divorce settlement and on her relationships with Gary and Mac?
4. Wynter bakes bread as a panacea for heartache and depression. Why do you think she finds this process so therapeutic? Do you have any rituals or hobbies you turn to when you are feeling blue? Why and how do they help you?
5. During Wynter's apprenticeship in France she receives some advice from Jean-Marc, the bakery's owner: "You do not tell the bread what to do. It tells you. You know from the way it looks, the way it feels, the smell, the taste. How warm, how cold. How wet, how dry." How might Wynter apply this knowledge to her life?
6. Wynter holds back from telling CM that her marriage to Neil is a mistake. Why do you think she doesn't say anything to CM? Do you think she would have been as perceptive about that relationship while she was still with David?
7. Hendricks ends her novel with the promise of romance for Wynter. If the novel hadn't ended this way—if, for instance, Wynter had found Mac in the cabin with another woman—how do you think Wynter would cope? How would it change your feelings about the novel?
8. How would you describe the process of baking bread as a metaphor for life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
top of page (summary)