The Baker's Daughter, by Sarah McCoy

THE BAKER’S DAUGHTER
Sarah McCoy
Crown Publishers
January 2012,
$23.00, Hardcover
304 pages, 978-0307460189.








In 1944, Elsie Schmidt accompanies a German officer to an official Nazi party given on Christmas Eve in Garmisch, Germany during World War II. Elsie, a baker’s daughter is a bundle of nerves yet lighthearted as her date, Herr Josef Hubb arrives. Many surprises greet Elsie at the party. She is accosted by drunk and vile officer with lascivious intentions. Fortunately she is saved when a young boy who had just finished singing for the Germans interrupts the crime. The boy’s name is Tobias, a Jew. Also during the evening Josef stuns Elsie with a marriage proposal and presents her with an exquisite engagement ring. Josef will have to wait for Elsie’s answer. She becomes suspicious and curious when she discovers some barely visible Hebrew letters nearly etched away on the inside band. She has heard stories about camps and confiscation of property, but would Josef be involved? Later in the evening she is surprised again when Tobias arrives at her back door, he has escaped. With no time to spare, Elsie decides to hide the boy, even though the risk of death at the hands of the ruthless Gestapo is chilling.

Reba Adams is a journalist for a local magazine in El Paso, Texas, in 2007. Her assignment is to research and write about ways various cultures celebrate Christmas. She attempts to interview the elderly woman who owns Elsie’s German Bakery with little success. Finally after meeting Elsie’s daughter Jane at the bakery, she is introduced to the feisty, outspoken, hard working Elsie. Ironically, Reba wears the engagement ring her boyfriend Riki gave her around her neck, still unable to commit to marriage. Riki works for the Border Patrol along the Texas/Mexican border, assigned to capture and return of illegal aliens.

Sarah McCoy has written and expansive, multi-generational family history that is intricately complex. The result is a deep and satisfying story that involves a clever strategy of interconnected lives. Many parallels between characters over time and place become apparent. The reader is pulled across the decades with this writer’s clever craft as you follow Elsie at age seventeen in 1944, to Elsie’s life in Texas at seventy-nine. Family secrets, courage, love and forgiveness are themes that resonate throughout this richly well written novel with boundless depth that will pull the reader forward.

On a personal note: I was a captive reader unable to put it down, reluctant to see this story end.
Thanks to the author for a welcomed legacy from Elsie’s bakery: a warm encore. This will be a top pick for Bookworm’s Dinner in 2012.


Wisteria Leigh
Sunday, April 1, 2012

Disclosure: This book was won in a giveaway through Read It Forward. Many thanks.


© [Wisteria Leigh] and [Bookworm's Dinner], [2008-2012].

Review & Book Giveaway-Days of Grace

DAYS OF GRACE
by Catherine Hall
Viking/Penguin Group
$25.95 pages, 304 pages
ISBN 13 :978-0-670-021765
Published 5/27/2010


Synopsis from the Book Jacket:

Be careful what you say, like everyone else, you will hear things that the enemy mustn’t know. Keep that knowledge to yourself-and don’t give away any clues keep smiling.

On the cusp of World War !!, this warning resonates with Britain’s fearful population. But to Nora Lynch, these words carry another layer of meaning, one more intimate and shameful. And for more than fifty years, she will keep her lips tightly sealed.

When the war breaks out, twelve-year-old Nora is one of thousands of London children evacuated to the safety of the English countryside. Her surrogate family, Reverend Rivers, his wife, and their daughter, Grace, offer Nora affection and a wealth of comforts previously unknown to her. But what Nora is too young and too naive to understand is that the place she’s been sent to isn’t the Eden she originally believes it to be.

As the dogfights rage ever more fiercely overhead, Nora’s friendship with Grace intensifies, but Nora aches to become even closer. What happens next is a secret that she hill harbor for decades, a secret that Nora begins to reveal only when, elderly and ill, she can no longer bear its haunting corrosive power.

My Thoughts:

The story is told with alternating chapters of Nora speaking: the elder Nora, and Nora in the present. I realized pretty early on that the elder Nora is angry and reflects upon her life. She is a cranky, bitter old woman who stares out the window at her young neighbor across the street, a pregnant young girl. The young Nora is jaded by the wonderful life she now has in the country. She adores Grace and they become fast friends. In fact Nora falls in love with Grace. On the outside, Grace seems to have it all, loving parents and a good home in the country. Nora feels she was sent away and struggles with her feelings about her mother. When given the opportunity to return to London to be with her mother she makes a difficult decision that weighs on her.

The early part of the book reads a bit slowly, hang in there, I promise when Nora and Grace make adventurous plans you will be anxious for the details that follow. There are many secrets in Days of Grace that propels the reader ahead. Many years later, Nora old, frail and on the verge of crossing over, reflects on a secret so dark it has shadowed her life with grayness.

Catherine Hall’s debut novel is a haunting story of friendship and love and the secrets of life that determine our destiny if we allow it.

Disclosure: This was a free copy sent to me by the publisher.

Win a copy of this book!!!! Contest runs till July 16th, 2010

Review-The Girl in the Lighthouse, by Roxane Tepfer Sanford

THE GIRL IN THE LIGHTHOUSE
Roxane Tepfer Sanford
Lumina Press, 2009,
$13.95,pb
250pp
978-1-60594-238-4


Lillian Arrington’s father is a lighthouse keeper and until the age of nine she lived in an isolated world devoid of friends. Born in 1862 to Ameilia and Garrett she was the epitome of daddy’s little girl. Her mother was not always well, but she and her father were inseparable. When her father is transferred to Jasper Island she abounds with joy when she learns there will be an assistant keeper on the island who has two sons. With hope and anticipation she meets Heath and Ayden, and the trio become instant companions. Lillian’s childhood is carefree and joyous with each day full of promise with a bright outlook toward the future. Her world is flipped on end when her mother’s health becomes critical.

Lillian’s lifestyle turns from joy to misery when she is sent to live with her grandmother, Eugenia on her Georgia plantation. Southern to the core with a drive to rekindle the glory of the past, Eugenia Arrington is nothing like her daughter Amelia. Lillian must endure new challenges that are painful, physically and mentally as she uncovers deep secrets from her families past. Wounds of flesh and mind will scar her deeply as she tries to cope with her discoveries.

Taking place in a variety of settings, Sanford depicts each vista with accurate acuity. The details enable the reader clarity and perception as if you were there. Eugenia, hateful and retched juxtaposed with Lillian’s loving and sweet demeanor are both fully developed characters representing good versus evil in imaginative tale of immorality.

Glimmers of Lillian’s past are sparingly uncovered as the author teases you through to the conclusion. A long journey for Lillian, this historical fiction novel is brimming with tension and crescendo like drama that will captivate the reader.