Author : Stephan P. Kiernan
Plot
The World War II witnessed many horrors and murders, heinous crimes where people were treated like filth and many died a horrendous death, facing the wrath of Auschwitz.
Germany was looking for supremacy across Europe to establish The Third Reich. The Germans captured France in 1940. It took four long years before the D-Day on June 5, 1944 when Allied forces rallied into the small village of Normandy on the French coast to make the German forces retreat.
The Baker’s secret is the survival story of the villagers in Normandy during the German occupancy and the camaraderie and grit which pulled them together through those atrocious times.
Many a times I found myself comparing this book with The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society, as both of them have a very similar story line.
Emmanuelle is the local baker in the village whose father was arrested for participating in the Resistance, her lover taken away to work for the Germans and her tutor, the local baker who taught her baking, was killed mercilessly because he was a Jew.
Left alone with her grandmother, at a tender age of 22, Emma has to tread a dangerous path, to keep both herself and her old grandmother safe from the German troops. Emma takes up this challenge splendidly and even goes two steps ahead, helping other fellow villagers in whatever means she could.
The only reason Emma is spared from the troops is because the kommandant of the German army stationed in the village loves her bread. So, she is given flour strictly sufficient to bake twelve loaves of bread every day and deliver it to the German forces. She ingeniously mixes straw to the flour and bakes 2 extra loaves per day to distribute it among the villagers. And then starts her trading venture, where she travels across the village and starts trading one good to another, fuel for fish, fish for eggs, bulb for tobacco and so on, thus touching the lives of most of the villagers and helping them survive.
But things start getting difficult for Emma and the villagers when the German forces tightens their vigilance and start shooting people mercilessly. They are on the brink of losing their faith and hope to live when finally, on the D-Day the Allied forces attack the German base by air and the sea.
It is a story of courage and survival, and could have been an exceptional book, but the narration style makes it a little difficult to read. The narration is a little passive and delves too much into details which are perhaps not very relevant during war times. It does take a while to get into the story and see what is going on.
Survival stories without a lot of heroism are a little tricky, it does take a unique narration style to make them interesting. That is what made Guernsey quite engaging, the entire novel is narrated through a series of letters, a budding romance comes with its own merits. This book lacks that aspect and hence proves to be a slightly arduous read. But in the end, the very fact that hope, grit and courage win over despair and grief is too strong a message to ignore and let go.
I would definitely recommend this book, but be prepared for a slow run. It is quiet one.
Rating: 👍👍👍
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