Bread for the Baker's Child: A Novel - Softcover

Caldwell, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1889330663 ISBN 13: 9781889330662

Publisher: Sarabande Books, 2002

Synopsis

After nearly ten years, Joseph Caldwell returns to the literary scene with a rich novel of immense and resonant scope. With Dostoevskyian ambition, Bread for the Baker's Child sets out to probe the large questions of good and evil, culpability and sacrifice, and the meaning of suffering.

In this tale of two lives immutably intertwined, Sister Rachel is a nun in a failing order, a painter with a history of madness, devoted to her dying Mother General. Her brother Phillip is an accountant serving time for embezzlement, a man capable of great violence and anger who has turned his back not simply on the church, but faith as well. They have nothing in common except for a shared childhood tragedy.

Or do they? In this masterful display of structural precision, Caldwell slowly unravels the complementary nature of these two lives—at first glance hermetically sealed from one another—until their shared fate becomes a symbiotic relationship, as though they were two sides of the same coin, intersecting and reflecting one another. Through events operatic in tone and reach, Rachel and Phillip come to redefine our notions of love and kinship, and embody the human need for redemption and forgiveness.

Marketing plans for Bread for the Baker's Child:
· Author tour in Northeast area (New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C.).
· Newsletter, brochure, catalog, and postcard mailings.
· Advertisements in key literary and trade magazines.

Playwright and novelist, Joseph Caldwell is the author of four previous novels, The Uncle From Rome, Under the Dog Star, The Deer at the River, and In Such Dark Places. He twice held the John Golden Fellowship in Playwriting at Yale University's School of Drama, and was awarded The Rome Prize in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York City.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Bread for the Baker's Child is the forty-second title to be published by Sarabande Books, a nonprofit literary press headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. Since the 1996 debut of the press, Sarabande Books titles have received positive review attention from nationally distinguished media including The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, American Book Review, Small Press, The Nation, and Library Journal.

From the Inside Flap:

After a quiet absence of nearly ten years, Joseph Caldwell returns with a rich novel of immense and resonant scope. With Dostoyevskian ambition, Bread for the Bakers Child sets out to probe the large questions of good and evil, culpability and sacrifice, the meaning of suffering; his characters are placed at the very center of such contradictory considerations. In this tale of two lives immutably intertwined, Sister Rachel is a nun in a failing order, a painter with a history of madness, devoted to her dying Mother General. Her gay brother Phillip is an accountant serving time for embezzlement, a man capable of great violence and anger who has turned his back not simply on the church, but faith as well. They have nothing in common except for a shared childhood tragedy. Or do they? In this masterful display of structural precision, Caldwell slowly unravels the complementary nature of these two livesat first glance hermetically sealed from one anotheruntil their shared fate becomes a symbiotic relationship, as though they were two sides of the same coin, intersecting and reflecting one another. Through events operatic in tone and reach, until the irrevocable, shattering conclusion, Rachel and Phillip come to redefine our notions of love and kinship, and embody the human need for redemption and forgiveness.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1889330663
• ISBN 13: 9781889330662
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184