On February 26th, Jodi Picoult releases her latest novel, The Storyteller.
Sage Singer is a baker. 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. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage's grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship.
Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried secret, and asks Sage for an extraordinary favour. With the integrity of the closest friend clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions she's made about her life. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and mercy?
Another thought-provoking story that is sure to please and challenge fans of Jodi Picoult, the Indigo Blog is pleased to share this brief excerpt as a teaser.
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My legs were hooked around the stool where I sat, watching my father shape loaves. He set them to proof inside the floured folds of a baker’s couche, patting the round, dimpled rise of each one, supple as a baby’s bottom. Inside my brassiere, the edges of my Christian papers seared my skin. I imagined getting undressed that night, finding the name of some goyishe girl tattooed over my breast.
“Josek’s family is leaving,” I announced.
My father’s hands, which were always moving, stilled over the dough.
“When did you see him?”
“Today. After school. He wanted to say good-bye.”
My father nodded and pulled another clot of dough into a small rectangle.
“Are we going to leave town?” I asked.
“If we did, Minusia,” my father said, “who would feed everyone else?”
“It’s more important that we’re safe. Especially with Basia having a baby.”
My father slammed his hand down on the butcher block, creating a small storm of flour. “Do you think I cannot keep my own family safe?” he bellowed. “Do you think that’s not important to me?”
“No, Papa,” I whispered.
He walked around the counter and gripped my shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said. “Family is everything to me. You are everything to me. I would tear this bakery down brick by brick with my own hands if it meant you wouldn’t be harmed.”
I had never seen him like this. My father, who was always so sure of himself, always ready with a joke to diffuse the most difficult situation, was barely holding himself together. “Your name, Minka. Short for Wilhelmina. You know what it means? Chosen protection. I will always choose to protect you.” He looked at me for a long moment, and then sighed. “I was going to save these for a Chanukah gift, but I’m thinking maybe now is the time for a present.”
I sat while he disappeared into the back room where he kept the records of shipments of grain and salt and butter. He returned with a burlap sack, its drawstring pulled tight as a spinster’s mouth. “A Freilichen Chanukah,” he said. “A couple of months early, anyway.”
With impatient hands I yanked at the knots to untie the package. The burlap pooled around a shiny pair of black boots.
They were new, which was a big deal. But they were nothing fancy, nothing that would make a girl rhapsodize over their fashionable stitching or style. “Thank you,” I said, forcing a smile and hugging my father around the neck.
“These are one of a kind. No one else has a pair like them. You must promise me to wear these boots at all times. Even when you are sleeping. You understand, Minka?” He took one from my lap and reached for the knife he used to hack off bits of dough from the massive amoeba on the counter. Inserting the tip into a groove at the heel, he twisted, and the bottom of the sole snapped off. At first, I could not understand why he was ruining my new present; then I realized that inside this hidden compartment were several gold coins. A fortune.
“No one knows they are in there,” my father said, “except you and me.” I thought of Josek’s broken hand, of the SS soldiers demanding money from him. This was my father’s insurance policy. He showed me how both heels opened, then fitted each back to the boot and whacked them a few times on the counter. “Good as new,” he said, and he handed the boots to me again. “And I mean it—I want you to wear them everywhere. Every day. When it’s cold, when it’s hot. When you’re going to the market or when you’re going dancing.” He grinned at
me. “Minka, make a note: I want to see you wearing them at my funeral.” I smiled back, relieved to be settled on familiar ground. “That may be a little tricky for you, don’t you think?”
He laughed, then, the big belly laugh that I always thought of when I thought of my father. With my new boots cradled in my lap, I considered the secret we now shared, and the one we didn’t. I never told my father about my Christian papers; not then, not ever. Mostly because I knew he would force me to use them.
As I finished the roll my father had baked just for me, I looked down at my blue sweater. On my shoulders, there was a dusting of flour that he had left behind when he grabbed me. I tried to brush it off, but it was no use. No matter what, I could see the faint handprints, as if I had been warned by a ghost.
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Thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada for sharing this excerpt. This excerpt has been edited for length.
Excerpted from The Storyteller - Copyright © 2012 by Jodi Picoult.
Excerpted by permission of Simon and Schuster Canada
All rights reserved.