The Storyteller

Certain tales never die...

A baker is Sage Singer. In an attempt to escape her reality of loneliness, painful memories, and the shadow of her mother's passing, she works through the night making the breads and pastries for the next day. They form an odd bond when Josef Weber, an old man who attends Sage's grief support group, starts to visit the bakery. They become friends despite their differences because they are able to see in one another the hidden wounds that others are blind to.

Everything changes the day Josef begs Sage for an unusual favour and reveals a horrible truth that has been hidden for a long time and no one else in the village would ever know. If she answers in the affirmative, she might suffer legal as well as moral consequences. Sage starts to doubt the presumptions and expectations she has made about her life and her family after having her identity abruptly called into question and the morality of her best friend in the past called into question. When does a moral decision turn into a moral requirement? And where does one draw the line between kindness and forgiveness, punishment and justice?

Jodi Picoult skillfully examines the extent people will go to save their family and prevent the past from controlling the present in her brutally honest book.