FROM AMAZON: In Wyn Morrison’s world a 5 AM phone call is rarely good news. It usually means equipment trouble at her bakery or a first shift employee calling in sick—something annoying but mundane, fixable. But the news she receives on a warm July morning is anything but mundane. Or fixable.

Mac, her ex-husband, is dead.

He’s not just in a different house with another woman, but actually, physically gone and the news ignites a firestorm of memories and regrets. Ineligible for widowhood, Wyn is nonetheless shaken to her core as she discovers that the fact of divorce offers no immunity from grief.

As Mac's executor, she is now faced with sorting his possessions, selling his house and trying to help his daughter Skye deal with financial and legal aspects of her inheritance--a task made more difficult by Skye’s grief, anger and resentment.

Ironically, just when Wyn needs support most, everyone she’s closest to is otherwise occupied. Her mother and stepfather have moved to Northern California, her best friend CM has finally married the love of her life and is commuting to New York, and her protégé Tyler is busy managing the bakery and dealing with her first serious love affair. They’re all sympathetic, but bewildered by her spiral into sadness. After all, it’s been three years since the divorce.

Once again the bakery becomes her center as she places herself back in the bread rotation. In the cool, gray light just before dawn, enveloped by the familiar smells of wheat and yeast and coffee, the hypnotic rhythms of Bach, the radiant warmth of the ovens, the borderline softens, becomes a permeable membrane letting her pass freely between past and present. She might be Jean-Marc’s apprentice at the Boulangerie du Pont, washing bowls and pans, shaping clumsy beginner’s loaves and learning to make levain. Or working nights at the Queen Street Bakery in Seattle with the ever-obnoxious Linda, teaching Tyler to bake, experimenting with different flours and techniques, testing, searching for the ultimate loaf of bread.

Now she will sift through her memories of Mac and their life together, eventually coming to terms with who he was and why, with Skye and her anger, and with Alex, who was once more than a friend. Soon she will re-learn the lessons of bread that she first discovered at the Queen Street Bakery in Seattle… that bread is a process--slow, arduous, messy, mysterious--and should be consumed with the eyes closed and the heart open…

This tops off the third of this series and all I can say is I do hope she writes more, quickly. ( )

I must admit that I have a bread machine. It probably doesn't redeem me in any way to say that it is generally dusty with disuse either. I know that it is merely a shortcut for homemade bread and that it cannot come close to the delectable stuff made by hand in artisanal bakeries and the kitchens of home bakers but we all work with our own skills. And much as I'd love to actually learn to bake my own bread from scratch, I just don't see it in the cards for me, at least not on a regular basis, and certainly not as a passion. That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the skill that goes into making it or a gorgeous description of warm, yeasty bread with steam curling up from the torn bit of crust. Now I'm just making myself hungry! Judith Ryan Hendrick's newest novel, Baker's Blues, about a baker and her ex-husband, is the third in a trilogy that gets both bread making and the complications of love and relationships right.

Wynter Morrison owns a successful bakery in Los Angeles. She's somehow gotten away from making the bread herself, caught up in the logistics of owning the business rather than sinking her hands into the dough. She's been divorced from ex-husband Mac for several years but she is still thrown for a loop when she gets the early morning phone call that he has died unexpectedly. They share a long history and still cared for each other despite their divorce. Jumping back in time from the funeral and Mac's daughter's unreasonable anger at Wyn for her father's death, the novel turns to the past and the story of Wyn and Mac's marriage unraveling. Wyn works hard at her bakery and tries to support Mac, a best-selling author turning his book into a screenplay, as he does PR events and hits the party circuit. She misses the old, uncomplicated Mac she used to know, not certain of this slick and unhappy seeming version of himself. She wants him to open up and talk to her about his feelings, something he cannot do. In fact, he walks out on their marriage rather than face his demons or share his secrets. When Mac goes, Wyn has to find strength and meaning in herself again.

Opening the novel with Mac's death and then going back to plumb the depths of their relationship is very effective, allowing the reader to know that despite their divorce, Wyn's reaction to his death proves that neither Wyn nor Mac is a villain in the novel. The slow disintegration of their marriage and the reason behind it is incredibly emotional. Hendricks has drawn both Wyn's hurt frustration and Mac's deep despair and inability to stop sabotaging them very true to life. Wyn's character is hit with a confluence of terrible or life altering events all at once: Mac's desertion, the death of her beloved dog, an earthquake hitting Southern California, and her manager and friend leaving to go to school. It is no wonder that she's completely adrift or that she turns back to the slow art of creating, kneading, and baking bread as she tries to wrap her head around an unimaginable future. The majority of the novel is narrated by Wyn but there are several chapters where the perspective turns to the third person and the focus is on Mac. This gives the reader both Wyn's thoughts and reactions to Mac but also shows the depth of the depression crippling Mac's interpersonal relations and a well rounded explanation into the complexity of their love, which outlasts their marriage.

The novel is the final book in a trilogy but it easily stands on its own. Readers who start at the beginning with Bread Alone and continue with The Baker's Apprentice will already know some of the history that haunts Wyn and Mac and they will have a richer understanding of their relationships with many of the secondary characters but none of this knowledge is necessary to enjoy Baker's Blues. Although it tackles the hard topic of being depressed and living with someone who is depressed, there is still a warm and comfortable feel to the writing and the story. The reader is pulled along through the end of Wyn and Mac's marriage, knowing what is coming but still turning the pages to see how they get there and how Wyn will go on after Mac's death. There are a significant number of secondary plot lines here that compliment the main story arc. Be warned that the luscious descriptions of food and bread will have your stomach rumbling as you read. Sad and lovely, I recommend you read all three of the books but even just this one will do. ( )

I did not realize that this was the finale book of a trilogy when I decided to read it. I don’t think it would have changed my mind any to have known that in advance and the book stands alone just fine – I didn’t feel lost or like I was missing any information. The book opens with the funeral of Wyn’s ex husband although I could tell from the beginning that there was a lot unreserved between the two of them and between Wyn and her stepdaughter.

This is really a book about relationships and how life changes some for the better, others for the worse and makes others stronger. Sometimes they wax and sometimes they wane. But it’s important to keep people close because you don’t know when you’ll need them.

The book starts in the present time but soon moves into the past as Wyn thinks back to how her relationship with Mac fell apart. His recently found daughter seems to think that it’s Wyn’s fault that Mac is dead. That it’s Wyn’s fault that they broke up but Wyn doesn’t want to speak ill of a man she loved. But eventually all with understand what happened – even Wyn. She turns back to something that always comforted her, baking bread. It’s at the core of who she is.

I really enjoyed this novel. I fell in love with the characters, even prickly Skye (Mac’s daughter). I also love to bake bread so I completely understood Wyn’s turning to something so soothing as her life tumbled out of control. It was a book I found hard to put down and I’m still thinking about it several days after I finished it. I’d really like to find time to pick up the other two books in the trilogy. ( )