With the Baker’s Wife by Erin Healy, I learned something about myself! This is a mystery with rich with religious and psychological issues. The characters are drawn with beautiful detail. I found myself identifying with the main character, Audrey Bofinger. I tend to feel the pain and hurt of people deep within myself. Audrey does this to an extreme and uses “her gift” to get into missing person’s thoughts and feelings so deeply that she can figure out how to find them. She was so worn from feeling the pain or thoughts of others that she resorted to giving the families of those troubled or dealing with pain or sickness loaves of bread. She felt guilty about it like I do when I withdraw from something that I know will drain me too much. Now I see that as a normal activity, a way of protection.Getting to the story, Audrey is a part of a loving family. Her husband, Geoff was the pastor of their church until something happened between Ed and the daughter of the Sergeant Jack Mansfield. Jack called an emergency meeting as a church deacon and provided “evidence” pushed for the firing of a pastor and banning of him ever to be a pastor again. I have meet Jack before several times in real people at churches, job interviews and other places. The irony is that I have seen something similar in real life. A deacon at my church called a meeting and had a pastor fired for a different reason. I will not go into it here, but that reason would have been my reason for hiring him!Jack knows that the Lord is on his side and is constantly quoting the scripture to justify his thoughts and deeds. Jack sees everything in black and white, there is no forgiveness, he is extremely controlling. Jack does not examine his life or consider loving the people around him, he is just interested in them conforming to his view of correctness. Opposite of him is Ed, Audrey’s son and her husband, Geoff. They pose their own perceptions. There is also a woman named Diane who is connected to the story and mystery but she is a bit slow and never realized that she had been wronged. She needs others to help her see herself different. The characters are beautifully drawn and the mystery did keep me in suspense but it was the characters in this book that shown for me. I have left out all the details of the mystery so you can discover them yourself!I definitely want to read more by this author. I received this book as a gift during the middle of the semester and decided to wait until break to read it because it was labeled as suspense. Although the book did not necessarily hook me from the start, after a few chapters, I did not want to put the book down. At first, I was intrigued the characters and found many of them interesting. With a mystery established in the beginning, the book kept me guessing throughout. When the book took an unexpected turn in the middle, I was even more drawn into the book, but the turn was not entirely unwarranted.The Baker's Wife made me think, and not just about the mystery but also about the characters. I could see the motivations of the characters include of the antagonist. There seems to be a lot of background in the beginning of the story, but this helps establish why the characters act the way they do for the rest of the story.I gave the book four out of five stars for its strong theme but heavy amount of details in the beginning. I would recommend this book to people who enjoy mystery or suspense stories in our current decade.
What do You think about The Baker's Wife (2011)?
Ending was odd. Seemed like it was rushed.
—Gutek488
