“It sounds good when she begs for me, doesn’t it?” “Where are your manners, Ania?” Damian chided. They knew better than to make an enemy of the captain of the guard. Old Sal was stirring the dregs of herring left in her barrel Farouk was folding his silks, studiously avoiding the confrontation. Once I got his money, I could go back home to my father. “Is that any way to speak to a paying customer?” It was the last baguette. I could feel the silver buttons of his uniform cutting into my skin. Damian’s arm snaked around me, a vise, pressing me along the length of his body. Although it was only October, there was a hint of winter in the air, and my hands were numb with the cold. I tried to leap to reach the coins, but I couldn’t, and stumbled. Excerptĭamian held his hand high, as his soldiers laughed behind him. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future.

With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t.Įverything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor.

When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. An astonishing novel about redemption and forgiveness from the “amazingly talented writer” ( HuffPost) and #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult.

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