by Jodi Picoult
First published 2013
Sage Singer kneads dough in the dark hours before dawn, using her work at the bakery to avoid the pain of her mother's death and her own isolation. When Josef Weber from her grief support group starts visiting the shop, an unexpected friendship develops between the young baker and the elderly man. Both carry hidden wounds that others cannot see. Their quiet companionship changes everything the day Josef reveals a shameful secret from his past and asks Sage for an impossible favor. His confession forces her to choose between loyalty to her friend and her own moral compass. The decision could bring legal consequences and shatters everything Sage believed about Josef and herself. As she grapples with questions of justice versus mercy and punishment versus forgiveness, Sage must decide how far she will go to protect those she loves while preventing the past from controlling her future.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: moral-dilemma, unreliable-narrator
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
461 pages · Hardcover · Atria
Content warnings: death, mental-illness