From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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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 WyattCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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