"Stones for Bread" by Christa Parrish

 A solitary artisan. A legacy of bread-baking. And one secret that could collapse her entire identity.

Liesl McNamara's life can be described in one word: bread. From her earliest memory, her mother and grandmother passed down the mystery of baking and the importance of this deceptively simple food. And now, as the owner of Wild Rise bake house, Liesl spends every day up to her elbows in dough, nourishing and perfecting her craft.

But the simple life she has cultivated is becoming quite complicated. Her head baker brings his troubled grandson into the bakeshop as an apprentice. Her waitress submits her recipes to a popular cable cooking show. And the man who delivers her flour --- a single father with strange culinary habits --- seems determined to win Liesl's affection.

When Wild Rise is featured on television, her quiet existence appears a thing of the past. And then a phone call from a woman claiming to be her half-sister forces Liesl to confront long-hidden secrets in her family's past. With her precious heritage crumbling around her, the baker must make a choice: allow herself to be buried in detachment and remorse, or take a leap of faith into a new life.

Stones for Bread is no standard sandwich loaf.  It's not even your typical artisan style, but this book is a slice above from the very first page until the last.  With three stories happening at once, each mingling together in every chapter, Parrish writes in a style rarely seen today.  

Liesl's present is directly influenced by her past, and so each chapter opens with a piece of that.  Parrish then moves you into the history of bread, which is followed by a recipe and then by what's happening in Liesl's present.  This takes the flashback phenomenon to a whole new level, but it's so well done and clearly written that it makes perfect sense.  Did I mention that I want to go bake some of these breads now?

That's not the only thing that's different in this book.  Parrish's writing style is more formal than many that you'll read today in the popular market.  It took me a chapter or two to adjust in the beginning, but soon I was on board with it.  In no way did this story feel watered down; instead, this formal style made if feel 'smarter' than your typical novel - and with all of the research that Parrish must have done to describe bread so completely, it may well be!

This was a story I couldn't put down.  I couldn't wait to find out what would happen between this fancy baker and the shaggy single dad.

It's a don't-miss read.

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Christa Parrish is the award-winning author of three novels, including the 2009 ECPA Fiction Book of the Year Watch Over Me. When she's not writing, she's a homeschool mother of three wonderful children. Married to author and pastor Chris Coppernoll, Christa serves with him as co-leader of their church's youth ministry as well as serving as a facilitator for a divorce recovery ministry. She is now also slightly obsessed with the art of baking bread.

Learn more about Christa at: http://christaparrish.com

I received a free copy of this book from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review.