Liesl McNamara's life revolves around bread and the bakery she has opened to follow her passion for the bread. Her memories of her mother and grandmother are wrapped up in the bread and she has sacrificed her dreams of travel for the bread. When it comes down to it, will the bread be more important than her relationships? And how does she fit faith into her life when she's so consumed with the bread?
How do I express how much I loved this book? While it's not very plot-driven, it is rich with characters and emotions and vulnerability. It took me awhile to adjust to the switches between current story, back story, and church history, but in the end, it was woven together so well that it made the book full and deep. The history of bread would not normally be exciting for me to read by itself, but as integral as it was to Liesl's life, it made me care about the bread. So much so, that I actually felt guilty buying plain white sandwich bread while reading this book. That's an absorbing story!
There were so many relationships tied into the story that revolved around bread, but they were intricate and deep and real. At first, I thought that the half-sister story line was distracting, and then I thought maybe it just wasn't filled out enough, but in the end, the purpose of the story was for Liesl to find herself both in the story of the bread and who she was without it, and the family story line served its purpose to help her.
I did find the recipes for bread sprinkled throughout the story a bit distracting; I would have preferred that they maybe be in an appendix at the end, but it did give me an appreciation for how much of an art these breads are.
As with Christa Parrish's other novels, I loved this one, and I give it 5 stars. I will continue to eagerly await her future releases!
You can find Stones for Bread HERE.
You can find Christa Parrish's site HERE.
I received a copy of this book from Thomas Nelson publishers, as part of their BookSneeze program, in exchange for my honest review.
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