Bread for the Baker's Child: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Intense and Thought Provoking
Review: When informed of his sister Aggie's emotional collapse following a tragic fire that had caused the demise of thirty eighth-graders at the school where she was Sister Superior, Phillip 'Peppy' Manrahan was faced with a Heinz dilemma. Aggie, a nun who went by the religious name of Sister Mary Rachel, needed electroconvulsive shock therapy in order to cure her of screaming fits and grief-induced psychosis. Because Phillip held a long-simmering rage and resentment over the lack of respect that his corporation's superiors had shown him, he decided to use his expertise as an accountant to embezzle company funds to pay for Aggie's treatment. His thievery didn't stop there. He continued to cook the company books as a way to endow the Order of the Sisters of the Annunciation with funds for a new wing of the college library and much-needed repairs for their schools, convents, and Motherhouse - more than one million dollars in all. The Order had graciously accepted these donations from their anonymous benefactor, not knowing that he was a thief and Sister Rachel's younger brother. Later, when Phillip heard about the cancellation of an office colleague's health insurance because he had AIDS, Phillip's rage at the company resurfaced, and he resorted to embezzlement again to help Jack. After Jack's death, Phillip was caught for stealing the twenty-three thousand dollars that he had given Jack and was sentenced to prison for four years.

There, Phillip, a handsome gay man in his fifties, became the protector of another inmate, Talford Starbuck, a younger man with a hideous disfigurement. At first, their hooking up was only a sham, designed to protect the fragile Starbuck from other inmates. As time went by, they fell in love. Then, a terrible chain of events caused several deaths and brought about Phillip's condemnation to death row, sentenced to die in the electric chair. At the same time that Phillip was doing his prison time, Sister Rachel was tending to her dying Mother General in an old mansion in an unnamed location. After Mother's death, the remaining half-dozen sisters in this moribund Order would be scattered to new assignments, and the Motherhouse would be bulldozed.

In alternating passages, the reader is swept along from prison to convent and back again, with intricate flashbacks and recalled memories that serve to provide insights and clues to the characters' motivations and situations. The narrative structure resembles a fugue, with themes stated and restated, then varied, then counterpointed. One overarching theme in the novel is taken from Scripture, from Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, where he exhorts them to abide by what was known later as the Enchiridion and reminds them of what the Church would later call the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love (or charity, depending on the translation). 'If I have not charity' is the responsorial thread that is woven through the narrative. A second overarching theme is the 'Magnificat' from the gospel of Luke, which is Mary's response to the Annunciation: 'My soul gives glory to the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.' A third overarching theme is the Last Supper.

The title of the novel, 'Bread for the Baker's Child' is echoed in its epigraph: 'No one is worse shod than the shoemaker's child' and is repeated throughout in its gentle insistence on charity. The novel portrays many acts of charity. Sister Rachel made two bereavement calls: one to Mrs. Levy, the mother of one of the children who burned to death in the school fire, and the other to the mother of the murdered prison guard, (which reminded me of the visits that Sister Helen Prejean, the author of 'Dead Man Walking,' has made to the bereaved families of the men that she had counseled on Death Row). At the most intense part of the novel, Aggie and Peppy prayed together for those who had died.

Not since reading Mark Salzman's 'Lying Awake,' have I come across such a realistic portrayal of nuns, as is found in the characters of Mother General and Sister Rachel. All romantic and idealistic notions of religious life are brushed aside to show these two wonderful flawed human beings who also happen to be nuns. In the character of Phillip, one finds a gay man who has turned away from the Church because he could not be accepted there. Intense irony is present in the prison scenes with a priest who is too tired to tend his flock and a nun who wants to be there but is not allowed because she's not a member of the clergy.

'Bread for a Baker's Child' by Joseph Caldwell is a short novel that one might read from different perspectives. From one point of view, 'Bread' is a Catholic novel that examines the conscience of contemporary Catholicism; from another, it is a morality tale of sin and salvation; further, it is a Dostoyevskian narrative of crime and punishment; moreover, it is a story of redemptive suffering; and finally, one might find here an articulation of the mystical union between God, and a brother and sister, whose souls and destinies are forever entwined. Still, I do not exhaust the possibilities of meaning that one might find here, for to do so would require much rereading and reflection. Mr. Caldwell has been away from the literary scene for ten years, and, with this amazing book, he has returned.