Baker's Blues

In Wyn Morrison’s world a 5 A.M. phone call is rarely good news. It usually means equipment trouble at her bakery or a first shift employee calling in sick—something annoying but mundane, fixable. But the news she receives on a warm July morning is anything but mundane. Or fixable.

Mac, her ex-husband, is dead.

He’s not just in a different house with another woman, but actually, physically gone. Ineligible for widowhood, Wyn is nonetheless shaken to her core as she discovers that the fact of divorce offers no immunity from grief.

As Mac's executor, Wyn is now faced with not only sorting his possessions and selling the house, but also with helping his daughter Skye deal with financial and legal aspects of the estate--a task made more difficult by Skye’s grief, anger and resentment.

Ironically, just when Wyn needs support most, everyone she’s closest to is otherwise occupied. Her mother and stepfather have moved to Northern California, her best friend CM has finally married the love of her life and is commuting to New York, and her protégé Tyler is busy managing the bakery and dealing with her first serious love affair. They’re all sympathetic, but bewildered by her spiral into sadness. After all, it’s been three years since the divorce.

On her own, she stumbles at first. For the last several years Wyn has been more businesswoman than baker, leaving the actual bread making to others. Now, as she takes up her place in the bread rotation once more, she will sift through her memories, coming to terms with Mac and his demons, with Skye’s anger, and with Alex, who was once more than a friend. Soon she will re-learn the lessons that she first discovered at the Queen Street Bakery in Seattle…that bread is a process--slow, arduous, messy, mysterious--and best consumed with the eyes closed and the heart open.