The Baker's Daughter
Sarah McCoy, 2012
Crown Publishing
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307460196
Summary
In 1945, Elsie Schmidt is a naive teenager, as eager for her first sip of champagne as she is for her first kiss. She and her family have been protected from the worst of the terror and desperation overtaking her country by a high-ranking Nazi who wishes to marry her. So when an escaped Jewish boy arrives on Elsie’s doorstep in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, Elsie understands that opening the door would put all she loves in danger.
Sixty years later, in El Paso, Texas, Reba Adams is trying to file a feel-good Christmas piece for the local magazine. Reba is perpetually on the run from memories of a turbulent childhood, but she’s been in El Paso long enough to get a full-time job and a fiance, Riki Chavez. Riki, an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol, finds comfort in strict rules and regulations, whereas Reba feels that lines are often blurred.
Reba’s latest assignment has brought her to the shop of an elderly baker across town. The interview should take a few hours at most, but the owner of Elsie’s German Bakery is no easy subject. Reba finds herself returning to the bakery again and again, anxious to find the heart of the story. For Elsie, Reba’s questions are a stinging reminder of darker times: her life in Germany during that last bleak year of WWII. And as Elsie, Reba, and Riki’s lives become more intertwined, all are forced to confront the uncomfortable truths of the past and seek out the courage to forgive. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—April 14, 1980
• Where—Fort Knox, Kentucky, USA
• Raised—Frankfurt, Germany; states of Maryland, Kansas, Virginia
• Education—B.A., Virginia Tech; M.F.A., Old Dominion University
• Currently—lives in El Paso, Texas
Sarah McCoy is an American author of bestselling novels in the U.S. and internationally.
The daughter of a career Army officer, McCoy was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky but grew up on or near military installations—in Frankfurt, Germany; Aberdeen, Maryland; Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and various cities in Virginia. She attended Virginia Tech where she received her BA in Journalism and Public Relations. She earned her MFA in English Creative Writing from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Writing
McCoy's master's degree thesis was her debut novel The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico, published by Random House in 2009. Her second novel The Baker’s Daughter, published in 2012, became a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, as well as an international bestseller. Her novella The Branch of Hazel is included in the WWII anthology Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion, published in 2014. The Mapmaker's Children, her third novel, was released in 2015.
McCoy's writing has also appeared in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, and the Huffington Post. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Personal
McCoy and her husband, an Army orthopedic surgeon, live in El Paso, Texas. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/17/2015.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
The Baker’s Daughter is both intricate and delicious.
New York Daily News
The Baker’s Daughter reminds me of why I read fiction. Thinking about the ideas brought up in McCoy’s novel, I don’t get depressed. I feel rejuvenated, affirmed that caring is not wrong, that it matters to me to live by the tenets I hold dear and that what I do matters. Reading fiction isn’t hiding from the world. It’s gathering strength to carry on.
Daily Kos (online)
Replete with raw emotion and suspense, The Baker’s Daughter is a fascinating journey through a horrifying time in world history that will resonate long after you close the book.
Historical Novel Society
Discussion Questions
1. The epigraph pairs two quotes; the first is from Mark Twain. The second is from Robert Frost’s poem “The Trial by Existence.” Why do you think McCoy put these quotes together? Which characters do you believe they reference?
2. The concept of baking, sharing and passing on recipes is woven throughout the book. What are a couple of your favorite family recipes? Have you shared those with your children and/or friends? How have recipes played a part in your own childhood and adult life?
3. Epistolary storytelling in the form of letter writing is a vital way the characters directly communicate with one another and express many of their innermost feelings. Do you have friends or family members with whom you frequently exchange letters, cards, or emails, though you rarely see them in person or talk on the phone? If so, do you find yourself being more or less open in those written communications?
4. Reba is continuously reinventing herself, trying on new personalities and fictitious lives. Why does she engage in this behavior? Why does she think running away from her family’s problems will help her achieve a new beginning? How do you believe discovering Elsie’s story changed Reba?
5. Considering Elsie’s true feelings for Josef, why does she take his gifts, accompany him to the ball, accept his proposal and wear his ring? Why does she pretend to be engaged to him? Do her circumstances make her betrayal right? If you were in her position, what would you have done?
6. When Reba finds her daddy’s therapy notes, she wishes she had never read them. She wants to remember him differently. She doesn’t want to believe that the facts are true. Have you ever felt this way about something? Looking back, do you feel remorse or gratitude for the decision you made regarding it?
7. Both Elsie and Reba are confronted with the issue of blind obedience. At what point must we question the governing regulations? At what point must we act on our own convictions? Is this a slippery slope?
8. Though generations apart, Elsie and Reba are both empowered women. How does this manifest in Elsie’s story? In Reba’s? How does McCoy depict gender roles? How do all the women characters claim or reclaim their power (Mutti, Hazel, Frau Rattelmuller, Jane, Deedee, Reba’s momma, Lillian, etc.)?
9. Does Josef’s personal suffering justify his public actions? Do you sympathize with Josef’s struggle between duty to country and his individual feelings? Why or why not? Similarly, how does Riki justify his daily work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection? Have you ever participated in something you didn’t believe in?
10. Collective ownership is a central tenet of the Lebensborn Program. What might you see are positive attributes of communal living? What are the negative? Discuss the importance of personal identity and/or possession to Elsie and society as a whole.
11. Do you believe Mutti was right to keep Frau Rattelmüller’s letters from Elsie? Discuss her motivations and the possible outcomes if she hadn’t kept the secret.
12. In the Epilogue, Jane gives Reba a recipe cookbook in honor of her “setting a wedding date.” Do you think they followed through? Where do you think Riki and Reba are today?
Book Club Activities
• Ask each book club member to bring a family recipe for a book club recipe swap or a prepared dish for a potluck of family foods. Go around the group sharing the history of each dish/recipe.
• Pull out pretty stationery or a lovely card and write an old friend. Say anything that comes to mind as if he or she were sitting beside you and see what comes to the page. Mail it as a surprise to that individual.
• Elsie and Hazel watched Jean Harlow’s Libeled Lady (1936) as girls. Consider renting the film and hosting a movie night with your book club. How do you see the female starlets resonating in Elsie? How would you cast The Baker’s Daughter as a movie?
• Have a baking party using Elsie’s German recipes from the novel’s Epilogue. Pick one as the theme (say, a Lebkuchen Bake-off) or try them all.
(Questions and Activities from the author's website.)